


Public/Private

by KerylRaist



Series: Tao of the Force [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Illustrated, Lord and Lady Ren?, M/M, Porn With Philosophy, Tao of the Force, The Order, musings on the nature of power and love, the maji, we've got weddings, what's the point of a handsome prince?, you wanted a wedding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 23:40:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 42
Words: 415,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17110358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KerylRaist/pseuds/KerylRaist
Summary: Book Three in the Tao of the Force-verse.Kylo and Rey have gotten their own spheres of power, The Order and The Maji set, now it's time to blend them together, and continue moving forward into a new hegemony for themselves, and the galaxy.





	1. The Order of the Maji: The Players

 

1/1/2

 

01:00 _The Supremacy_

 

“Did it go well?” Kinear asks Ellie as they stroll, slowly, toward the tram that will take them to the deck their suite is on.

She nods, also slowly. “I think so. They’re rough, but rough in a way people seem to respond well to.”

He arches an eyebrow, hoping she’ll expand on that. “From what I could see, about half of them are convinced they’ll be easily manipulated—“

“And they’ll be in for an interesting surprise in the not wildly distant future,” Kinear says.

She laughs, gently, at that. People are going to try, and she’s going to enjoy watching them fail. “Yes. And the rest seem to have an almost protective gut reaction to the two of them.”

Kinear knows better than to say, _Are you sure?_ After almost seventy years with Ellie, he knows she’s the sharpest reader of people to ever draw breath, Force skills or no. That said, _protective_ is not generally an emotion felt or expressed by the pirates that pilot these skies. So, instead of questioning her, he says, “Will of the Force in action?”

She nods. And she’s got a sense, that just possibly, the two of them emoting around, their own Force bright and sharp, may be working a spell, conscious or not. Actually, watching those two, definitely unconscious. Ellie’s still got thoughts, and plans, for what could be done if this were to be done consciously. And she’s not about to say anything about that to Pat, not here, not now. That’s a conversation for when they’re on their own, on her, personal, ship, fully alone.

They’re steps away from the tram, and know not to talk about anything of any real matter when they can be easily overheard. They step in, and sink onto one of the benches. Kinear wraps his arm around his wife, and she rests her head against his shoulder.

He kisses the top of her head and smirks a bit. “So, that retirement I was planning for us didn’t exactly work the way I was expecting.”

She sniggers back. “We’d have been bored.” They’d always joked about the little cottage, far off the beaten track, where they could just be Pat and Ellie, the old couple down the road. They’d putter around their garden, and occasionally the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids would come and visit them.

“Yes, we would have.” He strokes the back of her neck. “But, maybe… Vacation? Take a few days off. After this gets settled down?”

They both know he’s not exactly talking about what most of the rest of the galaxy would call a vacation.

She smiles a bit. “Maybe go visit Naboo?”

“You had some friends there, if I remember?”

 

 

“You do remember.” They share a look. Neither of them has to say it. If they can dig up enough proof for the future Baby Girl Ren to make a decent claim on Naboo, they’re _going_ to find it, and take custody of it. Information you control is information that can’t sneak up and bite you in the ass. “It’s been a while, but it’s good to visit old friends.”

Kinear smiles at that. Old friends indeed.

“Might be a good plan to see New Alderaan.”

Pat nods. “I’ve heard good things about it. They’re working on rebuilding Alderaan, or as close as they can get. What are they up to, now? Eight, ten million people?”

“Something like that. Might want to get there sooner rather than later,” Ellie says. They both heard Kylo tell Long who his mother was. It’s only a matter of time before Prince Ben comes into play.

Pat nods. “They’re supposed to be a lovely community. Very fair-minded, egalitarian. Cosmopolitan in their attitudes but still attached to the soil.”

“We could certainly do worse on vacation,” Ellie says, not watching the other people on the tram, but aware of them.

“We could.”

They sway with the ride as it moves across the deck. People get on and off with each stop, and the Kinears sit, holding each other, patient. Any other night, and two old people in formal wear, this late at night would get a lot of questioning looks, but tonight… People have been leaving the party for hours. Some people look twice, but they don’t stare.

Eventually, they get to their stop, and to the lift, where they get the lift to themselves.

“What’s the next play?” Pat asks his wife.

“You remember the stories we used to read the children? And how many of them ended with the handsome prince marrying the beautiful lady, and they go onto rule and live happily ever after?”

Pat smiles. He does. “Some of my better memories of the little ones are sitting on the bed with them snuggled around, reading to them.”

“I bet a lot of people have memories like that. And a lot of them have that story, or versions of it, in their mind.”

Pat smirks. “And we’ve got a literal handsome prince, so we might as well work it within a centimeter of it’s life?”

“We said it earlier, people like the idea of an anointed ruler, touched by the hand of God or the Force. They need the idea of _destiny_ and a universe that spins with purpose and design. They clean up nicely. Look good in pictures. Are clumsy in social situations in a cute and vulnerable sort of way that seems to encourage people to like them. Have… an easily swallowed policy that just about anyone can get behind. Assuming we can get them to go along with it… Why conquer with guns and ships when we can just shine them up, stick them in front of cameras, hopefully get them to smile, and ask everyone to join us in the fairy story?”

Pat smiles. “Is it ever that easy?”

She smiles back at him. “No. But we’re closer to it than anyone has ever gotten before, so we might as well use it.”

“He talks some about building palaces. That might be Jon’s idea originally.” Kinear kisses his lady’s hand. “And what’s a palace without a prince and princess to stick inside of it?”

She gently pats his cheek. “And a Grand Vizier behind the scenes.”

Pat smiles and kisses her palm this time. “As long as this body consents to draw breath.”

The few people waiting for the lift when it opens on the F deck see a very old couple, in very fine formal wear, laughing gently with each other, slowly ambling toward their rooms.  

 

 

* * *

06:30 Lirium

 

“Oh, fuck NO!” Finn says as Rose explains what Mirina was hoping they’d do for the Order.

Last night had been good. Rey had brought Rose home, Finn had stared at her like he’d never seen her before for a good minute, just about tripping over his tongue, and then they had a _very_ good few hours, before Magiit brought Paige back. But now, the next morning, as they’re feeding Paige, and themselves, breakfast, and she’s telling him more about what happened… “No! Just… NO!”

“I’m not saying we’re doing it.”

He eyes her. “But you’re thinking about it. I can feel that. The idea of… changing things… You like that.” After all, she might have joined the Resistance for revenge, but she didn’t _stay_ for it.

Rose sighs. “I do. And she needs someone watching her back.”

“She needs to get out of this.”

Rose shrugs at that.

“We need to not get dragged into this.”

She half-inclines her head.

“Stop that. You don’t want to argue with me, but you don’t want to agree with me, so you’re just… nodding.”

 

 

Rose sighs. “You didn’t see her, Finn.”

“She dropped you off. I saw her.” In the sense that he was aware that Rey was in the room, but his eyes were glued to Rose, her hair softly waved, and some sort of makeup on, and she’d brought her date night clothing and slipped into that, so he didn’t really _see_ Rey. No, he was staring at his wife, all dolled up, and looking like sex on legs, and was intending to enjoy the absolute hell out of that.

“Not there, not on the ship. Not… as a queen. Not as _his_ queen.” Watching Ren go mute at the sight of Rey, and then go beaming love and adoration at her, his Force bright and strong enough that everyone in the room got hit with it, looking at her like she’s his sun, and if he’s very lucky he’ll get to spend the rest of his life orbiting around her, went quite a way to helping Rose feel better about this _Order_ thing. Anyone who can feel like that about another person is someone Rose is sure she can find some common ground with. “If he wasn’t part of it, you’d be all over getting behind her as some sort of leader.”

“He’s part of it, Rose. And _he’s_ not… He’s not like mushrooms, something I can eat around and ignore because I don’t like the way they taste. I’ll tolerate him being around, here, because I pretty much have to, but I’m not going out of my way to make life easier for him.”

“She needs help.”

“And I’m more than comfortable helping _here_. I’ll bring stuff here. I’ll help kids learn to use batons or whatever. But I’m _not_ getting back on that ship. And honestly, I’m surprised you were willing to do it.”

Rose shrugs again. “It’s different now.”

“Different doesn’t mean better.”

She cedes that point, but at least compared to how she remembers the _Supremacy_ she thinks it’s better, too.

 

 

* * *

14:30 _The Supremacy_

Jon can feel eyes on him. Not a lot of them. But the ones he’s sensing… matter.

He’s not sure how much of it is that keeping under the radar when you’re part of the inner ruling circle is difficult, even under the best of circumstances, and how much of it is his Mum and sister are in the back, with a circle of other well-connected, _important_ people, and she’s happily off bragging about what he does and how he’s doing it.

A lot of things are true about Mirina Frakes, subtlety isn’t one of them.

Either way, the days of him being able to just blend in are fading.

But for right now, and at least a while longer, he’s not attracting _too much_ attention.

Then Kylo steps up to his podium, hands gripping the edges of the top, and he starts to speak, and no one is paying attention to Jon any longer.

_Good._

Jon’s listening, and it’s good. Kylo’s staying on script, doing what he’s there to do, make people feel good about joining up, and getting more of them interested in doing it.

He’s seen better. But, of course, he would have. He’s been to a million weddings, and weddings, especially the sort he used to go to, could afford to have people who did nothing but give speeches run them. He’s seen some of the finest orators in the galaxy get up and weave together a line of words that could keep the listeners practically in tears at their beauty, going on about love and life and the preciousness of binding two or three or however many people together in a meeting of… blah, blah, blah.

Even the best orators tended to lose Jon by that point. When he was going to weddings regularly, he was too young and inexperienced to really _get_ what they were talking about.

And by the time he had been in that sort of love, he didn’t want a seventeen hour long speech-fest for his own wedding. Lane didn’t, either, so their vows were short, and heartfelt, and witnessed by three dozen people, and that was that.

He listens to Kylo, and it’s clear that he’s pushing a lot of Force into his voice. Jon can feel it. And… that’s interesting, when he’s paying attention, aware of the fact that it’s there, he can sense what Kylo’s doing. It’s not compulsion level Force work, but… He’s making the crowd go along with him, filling them with his passion for this. Jon’s not sure if he’s doing it intentionally, but he also doesn’t much care. It’s working.

Even Jon can feel the shift around him, the way the soldiers near him are leaning forward, lapping this sense of destiny and purpose up.

The last time he felt _this_ he was… well, here actually. Here looked a lot different. Almost everyone around him was in white armor. His husband was two ranks ahead, six men to the left, in his own perfect uniform, standing at attention, as they watched the broadcast of Hux on the Starkiller base, rallying the First Order to greatness.

He felt the shiver through his spine, and the stirring in his soul, the electric sensation of something massive, important, galaxy shifting about to happen, and… Though he prefers not to think too hard about it, like everyone around him, when he saw Starkiller fire, he cheered.

He looks around him, at naked faces, expressions intense and pleased, and then, as Ren sweeps Rey into his arms for a long and passionate kiss, expressions bursting out into laughing and cheering, he knows that there’s power in this. Power in the crowd. In the sense of belonging, of… brotherhood, or whatever they’ll call it.

The power of the Order, of them, together, here and now, and…

All they have to do is find something to aim it at.

Something _good._

 

 

* * *

14:45: The Supremacy

 

Rey has never, ever felt anything like this.

She’s never imagined feeling anything like this.

She’s never had the ability to even begin to imagine feeling anything like this.

Kylo’s kissing her, dipping her down low, his body supporting hers, as his lips play against hers, and there’s the feel of them, of his Force and hers, bright and happy.

But it’s not just them. There are more than four million people right here, right now, watching them, hollering and cheering, and this massive, immense, bigger than any big she’s ever even thought to contemplate, bigger than any big her vocabulary has ever thought to describe, wave of euphoria and cheering and happiness and giddiness and CHEERING and voices are clattering over them as people clap and it’s just…

 _Keep breathing, love._ Kylo’s voice in her mind, and right now he’s got her standing up, on her own feet, and using his body to block her from the view of the crowds.

She makes herself inhale, and exhale, and inhale again. Makes the jangling jitter of her own nerves and the nerves of everyone around her smooth out.

 

 

_I see why you wanted me here for this._

He smiles at that. Right now, he’s… calm. Happy, playful, very pleased with himself and the universe in general, but calm.

And she knows he isn’t always calm at these things, and wanted her own calm nearby.

He strokes her face, still keeping his broad shoulders between the view of her and everyone else. She can feel he’s aware of what he’s doing, and how he’s intentionally trying to make it look like they’re just petting.

He strokes her face. _I love you._

_I know._

She sees him smirk, and then roll his eyes a bit, and _I never told you that story, did I?_

_Kylo?_

_When we get a free moment. You ready?_

She takes another deep breath. The cheering and hollering is getting softer, but it’s not done, yet. _They’re going to yell more when you step away._

He’s grinning. _Yep. And you’re damn well worth it!_

She reaches up, onto her toes, and gently kisses him, and then back to her feet, holding his hand, stepping to his side, as he also turns to face the crowd.

The wave swells again. They… like this. They like what Kylo stands for. They like seeing him up here, with her. They like the show and the party and the festivities. They like the idea that there’s a purpose and a meaning and…

And if she had to guess, there are fewer than ten Force sensitives on this ship. Likely fewer than five. Possibly just her, Kylo, and whatever Force Mirina Frakes can bring to the surface. But with this many people, this close, all together, all on one subject, you don’t need to be Force sensitive. Just putting this many people near each other magnifies the feelings, spreads them around, makes everyone that much _more._

And right now, all of that _more_ is aimed at her, and him, and the future they’re out to build.

And it feels… intense and amazing and terrifying and good and nerve wracking, and she doesn’t think she’s ever tried to deal with this many emotions at once, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself, or… actually Kylo doesn’t know what either of them is supposed to be doing now, because the speech is done, and they’re just sort of standing there, and he’s starting to get nervous now, too, and…

Great…

Jon… There’s Jon. Thank the Force.

Jon comes over, linking arms with both of them, quietly saying, “Give them a bow or something, and then off the stage we go, okay?”

So, Kylo turns to the crowd and gives them a bow, and another roar hits them, and Rey smiles at them and waves, and that gets more cheering, and then Jon escorts them to the side exit, with Kinear and Schiff following.

 

 

* * *

“Now what?” Kylo says as Jon leads them to the same chamber they’d been waiting in before the speech.

“Meet and mingle,” Kinear says. “Roam around, go see the ship, talk to people.”

“Be nice, chat, but don’t linger too long,” Schiff adds. “People get nervous when the Boss is lingering. Kills the party. So spend more time on the on-duty areas.”

“Don’t people get nervous when the Boss is watching them work?” Kylo asks. He certainly never enjoyed Snoke or Luke hovering over him.

“They do,” Jon says, “but they’re significantly more likely to be sober when they’re working than at the party, so… Go, ask questions, talk to people. Be nice. Introduce Rey.” Jon turns to her. “How are you doing?”

She blinks, mouth opening and closing, and blinks again. “That was intense.”

Jon nods. “Yeah. Anytime you get a crowd like that and rile them up, it’ll be intense. I can’t imagine what it’s like when you can feel them all, like you two do.” He grins. “That said, both of you looked great. They loved the last bit with the kiss.”

“You think?” Kinear asks, voice dry, smile in his eyes.

Jon rolls his eyes at Kinear. “I’m in too damn good of a mood to deal with sarcasm right now. Anyway, off you two go, too. Come back with reports from the party.”

“And what are you doing, Jon?” Kylo asks.

“Sticking with you and Rey. Making sure someone who knows the layout of the ship is with you. Don’t want you getting lost.”

Kylo smirks at that, but… Well, given how much of the ship he’s seen, he likely would. Not that he can’t fix that readily, just port back to their rooms, but… “Okay. Let’s go wander.”

 

 

* * *

15:00 Space, En Route to Lirium

 

On his ship, returning from Driculam with a load of food for the Faviers, three more shipstones, a regulation roulette table, and a suit, a _good_ suit, hand-tailored specifically for him, Poe decides to settle in and watch Ren’s year end… year beginning, speech.

It’s… decent. He’s good with the content, amused by the kiss at the end, and all in all, it’s a solid ‘come join me’ sort of thing. He’s seen better. He’s seen worse. (He’s _done_ worse. Done better, too, but that was a long time ago, and given how giddy everyone was at just being alive, as long as he didn’t trip over his feet and face plant, they would have cheered at that speech.) It’s clear that rallying people and working a crowd are not Ren’s strong suits, but, not only could he be a lot worse at it, Poe was expecting him to be a lot worse at it.

 

 

He’s staring at the frozen holo, thinking that Ren’s likely trainable. He could probably learn to be really good at this. His mother was, after all. Rey could probably learn to be better than good, she’s got the sort of bright, genuine smile people like. He’s thinking about that, those pearly whites flashing in her wide, easy smile, when the hair on the back of his neck rise, which has him reaching for the blaster he’s not wearing because he’s alone on his ship streaking through space.

Then he sees why his body’s fear sensors fired off. His mouth drops. He’s heard the Force-sensitive Maji talk about this, but… He never expected it to happen, not to him.

“Leia,” slips out of his mouth.

“Hey, Poe,” she sits next to him, looking him over, seeing the Maji token, and the ship, and the newsfeed, paused on her son kissing his wife in front of the entire galaxy. She smirks a little at the image. “Looks like he’s got at least some flare for it.”

“Some. That’s probably the best part of it.”

Leia nods a bit at that. “They’ll learn.” She looks at Poe, eyes searching his. “They’re going to need help.”

“I know.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d offered some.”

He looks a little insulted at that. “You have to ask?”

“When I asked you to leave the Republic, you remember what I said?”

“That we needed passionate, rash people, people who still remembered what it meant to _feel_ to get off their asses and change the path of the galaxy.”

“Yeah.” She nods to the newsfeed. “I think they’ve got rash and passion covered. But they’re going to need someone older, wiser—“

Poe rolls his eyes extravagantly. “You are _not_ talking about me. Someone who fucked the whole bloody war sideways and got three quarters of his command killed in one move? That is _not_ older or wiser.”

“Someone who knows how badly failure can hurt, yes. That’s a big part of getting to older and wiser. You remember _why_ the Death Star was right near Yavin for us to blow it up?”

He thinks for a moment… That part of the story is always pretty hazy. In fact, as best he knows, no one has ever actually told him that part of the story. Leia, Han, Luke and the droids land. They hand off the intel. Then the Death Star pops up.

Leia shakes her head. There’s a reason why that part of the story is pretty much never told. “I led them straight to us. I knew they let us get away, but somehow I didn’t put that together with they were following, and within hours of getting to the base, there they were. Luck and the Force means we lived to see another day, but…” Left unspoken is the fact that more than three quarters of the Rebellion’s fighter pilots died in that attack. “Surviving something like that is _how_ you get older and wiser.” She’s got that _look_ aimed at him. The one he thinks of as the _mom_ look, and he briefly wonders if Ren ever saw this aimed at him. “You haven’t made a command decision since the battle of Crait.”

“I think it’s abundantly clear that I’m not the man for it. It’s not like I only made _one_ bad decision that day.”

She shakes her head at that. “And I think it’s abundantly clear that it’s time you got off your ass, stopped wallowing, show off what you’ve learned from your failures, and help my son and daughter make this fucking galaxy work.” She glances around at the ship. “They’ve been playing around for a year, getting things sorted out, and that probably had to happen, but playtime is over.”

He snorts.

“Or maybe it’s just starting. The board is set, and it’s time you pick up the dice and get in on the game.”

“How?”

She touches the token on his chest, or, at least, her finger hovers over it. “Time to claim who and what you are, Master Poe of the Maji.”

“What does that mean?”

Leia smirks. “Honestly, I’m not sure, yet, but we’ll know, soon. Things are going to be moving, and it’s time for you to get in on them.”

Poe sighs. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Do not give me that Ma’am stuff. You know better than that.”

Poe laughs at that, and Leia smiles at him before vanishing. 

 

 

* * *

15:30 _The Supremacy_

 

“You think he knows what he just did?” Schiff asks Kinear as they meander toward the F-deck after Ren’s speech.

 

 

Kinear shrugs. “I honestly don’t know. I’m not sure if my ‘economic warfare will hurt us just as badly if not worse than bombardments’ lesson sunk in. And on top of that, I don’t know if he realizes he just declared economic warfare on every system in the galaxy that depends on chattel slavery.”

“And yet you didn’t stop him, Pat.”

Kinear shrugs. “Should I have, Josh?”

Schiff tilts his head to the side. He’s not adverse to the move they’re planning, but… Timing… “Maybe until we were a _tad_ more secure…”

Pat shakes his head. “After last night… I think a bold statement was the way to go.”

Schiff catches the look in Pat’s eyes. “You’ve got more under your vest than you’re letting on.”

Kinear inclines his head, as if to say, _and you don’t?_ “How many governors and provisional consuls did you chat with last night?”

“At least a hundred,” Schiff replies.

“And were many of them getting interested in taking advantage of our ‘eventual emancipation’ program.”

“They were.”

Kinear smiles and nods. “If we’re moving into the emancipation, security, neutral meeting space, and contract enforcement business, an unstable galaxy is of value to us. Makes what we can offer of more value to the people around us. His statement is going to make a lot of systems clench hard in on themselves. Trying to keep colonies and people from coming to us and the like. That’ll start rebellions. Rebels need safe places to talk, plan, and buy goods.” And they can both envision a future where there will be Order places, very _free_ markets, perhaps, where said Rebels can do that. And Kinear can envision a future where those very free markets take note of who buys and uses what, and then uses that information to further the future financial flourishing of the Order. “Those rebellions will eventually come to terms.” Because all rebellions die, eventually. “And here we’ll be, sitting pretty, strong and stable, ready and waiting to offer our services as mediators and enforcers.”

Schiff shakes his head a bit. “The over-world overreacts. That build sympathy for the new system. They fight among themselves for a while, burning off their best and brightest...”

“ _Then_ they come to us, and we’ve got a _much_ easier time enforcing the situation because they’re weaker, and more of the people on the ground are happy to see us. We’ll swoop in as liberators and protectors, instead of one set of overlords made a deal with a different set. And, once we’re there, well-trained, talented, _good_ people might decide that we can offer them a better deal than their home world can.”

Schiff smirks. “Is there any situation where you haven’t already gamed it ten moves out?”

“Ellie would tell you that there are a _lot_ of them.”

Schiff sniggers at that. “If that’s our play, though, we’re going to need more ships.”

Kinear sighs. “More everything. If he’s even close to right about how fast we’re going to grow, even this monstrosity will be overrun in a matter of years.” He sighs again. Credits, they need more credits just to stay put, growing will take even more of them, and… He prays that getting where the Order is trying to be is lucrative.

“I think the first order of business for Frakes’ diplomacy department is getting in bed with as many systems with functional ship-building space-docks as will have us, and seeing if any of them are willing to shift alliance.”

Kinear nods at that. “What do you know about his new friend?”

Schiff raises an eyebrow. “The droid?” Schiff’s fairly sure that Kinear means Threepio, and not the three attractive people Frakes wandered off to entertain privately over the course of last night’s party. He’s still not sure if seducing people aiming for The Master is a good move or not, but he does know _that’s_ not a situation he needs to stick his nose in.

“The droid.”

“What do _you_ know about the droid?” Schiff asks, which tells Kinear all he needs to know about what Schiff knows about him.

“Did you see he told Long who his mother is?” Kinear asks, confirming to Schiff that he knows all there is to know about the droid, without either of them, specifically, mentioning that he appears to be Leia Organa’s personal protocol droid.  

“I heard. Leia Organa’s boy.” Schiff sighs at that. A lot of the direction they’re moving in is starting to make more sense. The thing he can’t tell is if Organa just played the ultimate long game and won, or if her son was giving her the biggest fuck you in the history of fuck-yous. But, of course, he’s still her son, and her ideals still rubbed off on him. Schiff’s leaning toward fuck you, but only because Organa hasn’t been seen in more than a year. “And I notice that that was _not_ a surprise to you.” There’s a bit of annoyance in Schiff’s voice at being kept out of that.

Pat checks, they are, for the moment, alone in the hallway. “I wasn’t breathing a word of that until he did. That said, he and his lady were silly enough to almost introduce her as Rey Amidala.”

Schiff winces. He knows the name. He doesn’t know the connection. But he knows how that name could be trouble. “His name or hers originally?”

“His. Even Vader couldn’t conjure babies from nothing.”

Schiff’s wince intensifies. “That would have been a fire in the O2 processors.”

“Yes. We averted that.”

“They are married, then?” Schiff says.

“Ish… There’s a records trail from Ben Solo to Ben Amidala to Rey Amidala, and, of course, you can trace his finger prints and iris to Ben Organa Solo, who was properly registered by his parents as a toddler, but…”

Schiff smirks. “But that’s not a wedding. And that’s not the chance to open this thing up and…” There are screens showing images of the speech around them for people who didn’t get to see it live. And there he is, Master of the Order, kissing the hell out of his bride. They pause to watch. “They’re extremely photogenic.”

Kinear’s nodding. “And there’s not a single system in the galaxy that was worse for the wear because it had young, pretty people with a glorious love story and a huge fucking wedding.”

“Join the Order, we’re prettier than the rest?”

“Well, not me and you. Not for a few decades at least,” Kinear chuckles. “But we’ve got it, so we might as well flaunt it. Beautiful, popular people have an easy time making alliances. People will want to be near them just to bask in their shine, so… we might as well use it.”

Schiff nods. “Might as well.” They stroll a few steps further, out of the eyes and ears of the crowd. “Do you think she’s still out there?”

“Organa?” Kinear asks.

“Organa. That’s her droid, right?”

Pat nods. “I think so. I never met her, or Threepio, in person, but I did see videos. And there was only one golden droid at her side with a little R2 hovering in the background.”

Schiff keeps looking at Kinear, making it clear he hasn’t answered the question.

“He told Long that both of his parents were no longer physically capable of attending things like parties.”

“So, dead, or so incapacitated as to be useless,” Schiff says.

“So incapacitated she gave up her Threepio.” They both know that no leader, no good leader, and no matter what else was true about Leia Organa, she was _good,_ gives up the electronic mind that knows all of their secrets, not unless they don’t need those secrets any longer.

“The Threepio who likely knows where they got their ships.” _The Admiral_ says, getting them back to why he thinks Kinear brought up Threepio in the first place. “It was always rumored that the Rebellion had dry docks hidden across the galaxy. Small ones. Nothing that could handle anything bigger than a destroyer. Even if they’re in terrible shape, we can fix them up. It’s easier to start with a broken down base, than it is to build from new, especially given the state of our finances.”

“Shall we float it by him gently? See if we’ve actually wooed him to our side? Pass the message to Frakes, let him know that’s the alliances we want, see if the droid bites, and if he does, splendid, and if not… Well, there are slicers who specialize in that sort of thing. He wouldn’t even know anything had happened.” Kinear thinks about it, and both he and Schiff know that gently or not, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

One day, in the not wildly distant future, Threepio, and the little R2 will have a visit, they’ll be turned off, their memory banks copied, and then turned back on with new memory overlays in place.

The beauty of an electronic mind is that, made of metal and silicon, it’s malleable in a way organic minds aren’t.  

That thought triggers another one, and the Grand Marshall and Grand Admiral share it. It’s beyond time that C8 got a few upgrades, among others, some sort of system in play so that he _can’t_ be turned off.

Or at least, not turned off with his memory banks in place.

 

 

* * *

19:30: _The Supremacy_

“And that’s what a Rear Gunner First Class does, Sirs… my Lady,” The gunner says, wrapping up, slightly nervously, his answer to Kylo’s “So, what do you do?” question.

Rey smiles at him, and that eases a lot of the nervous. “Do you like it?” she asks.

And that jolts nervous back up.

Both she and Kylo can feel she asked a wrong question, but neither of them know why.

“It’s good work, My Lady,” he answers diplomatically, and everyone relaxes again.

“Good. Thank you,” she says, and Jon leads them further down the hallway.

He quietly says to them, “Jobs are assigned. Testing finds aptitude. For that sort of job, he needs exceptional eyesight, very steady hands, and extremely fast reflexes. Liking it isn’t part of the equation.”

“Oh.” Rey replies. “Does… liking things come in at all?”

“If you’re an officer, sometimes. If you’ve got a wide enough array of skills. If you, like me, hired on to fill a specific position.”

Rey thinks about that, looks at Jon, looks at Kylo, and then says, “Could liking it come into play?”

Kylo shrugs and then looks at Jon. It’s clear he doesn’t know either.

“Maybe. Probably more than it does now. We’ve got a system in play right now, where you get in, get tested, get trained according to your strengths, get tested again, and then get shoved into the job that most closely matches your testing results. Depending on how well you tested, and what sort of job, you’ll get more training on the job or after, and keep moving around. That’s how the enlisted track works.

“If you test well on command decisions, planning, or like me, certain sorts of specialized skills…”

“Sewing?” Rey asks.

Jon scoffs at that. Yes, he’s _good at sewing,_ but _good at sewing_ does not an officer make. “Putting a production line in place. Anything with fingers can learn to sew. Not anyone can learn to turn 500 million credits into 2.5 million sets of armor designed for two branches, fourteen specialties, three camo terrains, twelve standard ranks, and twenty standard sizes. Assuming you’ve got something like that, you’ll get moved into the Officer track or directly into a rank.”

“Where does like come into play with that?” Kylo asks.

“Enlisted jobs can be very tight. The gunner just guns. An officer has a much wider to-do list, so said officer gets a bit more say about where they go. Say you’ve got top-class abstract math skills, you can go for the Navi Department or Logistics or Quantum Field Engineering or…”

Rey and Kylo both nod at that. They’re in the hallway now, which is, given the fact that most everyone has the day off, fairly empty.

Two Stormtroopers round the corner, see the three of them, snap into perfect attention and salutes, nervous vibrating off of them. Rey does her best not to laugh when she catches one of them thinking, _It’s her. Thank Iuna someone signed up to fuck that man! He’s been so much calmer, since._

Kylo caught it, too, and looks somewhat irked as he says, “At ease,” and then waves them on their way, and they go scurrying away.

Once they’re out of sight, Jon says, “What was that? They annoy you?”

Rey sniggers and Kylo rolls his eyes. “The girl was thinking ‘Thank Iuna someone signed up to fuck that man.”

Jon laughs at that. “Thank Iuna indeed.”

“Who or what is Iuna?” Kylo asks.

“A luck goddess. Popular with First Order troopers from the inner rim.” Jon checks the hallway, and then says. “Okay, so, how are you doing? It’s a good time for a break if you want one.”

Rey, noticing they’re alone, slouches for the first time in an hour. It feels good. “I could do with a break.”

Kylo nods. “Me, too.” He takes her hand and Jon’s and a moment later they’re in his rooms.

Jon’s gasping and blinking and finally gets out, “HOLY FUCK! Warn a guy! KYLO, shit…” he’s turning around looking at Kylo’s rooms. “You do not just grab someone and do that without asking. FUCK!”

Kylo winces, and flops onto their bed. “Sorry. I… It’s like walking for me. I’m so used to it, now.”

Jon takes a deep, steadying breath. His heart is galloping and his hands are shaking. He can see Rey holding a hand up, probably about to touch him and do Force alone knows what. He holds his hands up, steps back, a clear _No_ in his posture, and then says, “Okay, ground rules. For me, and for anyone else you want to interact with as a human: fucking _ask_ before doing shit like this! No… what the hell was that?”

“Teleporting,” Rey adds.

“No teleporting, no mind reading, no… magic stuff, without permission. If you’ve got to use the Force to do it, _ask first_!”

Kylo nods. “Okay.” He winces again. “I’ll forget some. Kick me if I do. Using the Force… some of it takes effort, and some of it really is like walking or breathing. I just _do it._ I can’t… not feel your emotional state. I can sometimes be so distracted I don’t notice it, but if I’m paying attention to you, I can’t not feel it.”

Jon sits down at the table, and Rey pulls off her shoes, and hunts down the manicure/pedicure box. They’ve got a million more hours of walking and standing around today, and her new shoes are a bit stiff and tight still.

Jon sees her do that. A good foot rub would probably help get his heart rate back down. “Good plan.”

As he’s saying that, and as he’s getting ready to talk more about Kylo and the Force, and the Force and other people, C8 comes in. “I thought I heard you.” He’s got a tray covered in sandwiches, fruits, a pitcher of something, cups, and bowls of soup. “I took the liberty of ordering dinner. If there’s anything else you want, let me know.”

“Thank you, C8. How are things going in here?” Kylo asks as the droid sets the food on the table.

“Very well, Sir. I have a collection of reports ready for you for tomorrow.”

Kylo nods at that. “Of course you do. The day after tomorrow. We’re off tomorrow.”

“I’ll have your coffee and reports ready, sir.”

“Thanks, C8.”

Once C8 is out, Jon looks over to Kylo. “Okay, basic rules of polite human interactions.” Rey’s pulling a sandwich to her hand. “And this goes for you, too. It looks like you don’t use it as much as he does, but I know you can, so… First and foremost, if you wouldn’t want someone to just do it to you, bloody well _ask_ before you do it to someone else. I can promise that neither of you would appreciate suddenly getting yanked out of reality without a hint of warning and plopped somewhere else.”

Rey shrugs a bit. “Ask me how I got off Jakku.”

Jon glares at her. “Did you _enjoy_ it?”

“No.”

“Then just because it happened to you before is no reason to do it to someone else. Especially if you know it feels like shit.

“Rule number two,” he pauses, “Actually, there is no rule number two. If it’d bug you to have it done to you, if you can imagine it bugging you if it happened to you…” He stares at the two of them for a moment, and decides that based on what he knows about Kylo, he might need a different track here, “Okay scratch that, if it would bug you if someone did it to Rey,” then he looks from Kylo to Rey, “or if someone did it to Kylo, don’t do it to someone else without asking permission.”

Rey inclines her head, and then nods. Kylo does, too, pulling himself up to seated, and says to Jon, “I’m sorry. Next time I will ask first.”

“Good.”

Kylo gets up and joins them at the table, fixing up a plate of supper for himself. The three of them take a moment chewing on the sandwiches and sipping drinks. Eventually Rey says, “What if it’s important?”

Jon looks at her. “You need to do something, you asked, they said no, but you think it’s got to happen anyway?”

“Yes.”

He raises an eyebrow, not as a question, but as a wry expression. “Sometimes, it’s good to be the king. Just do it sparingly, and make sure you’re bloody well right about it being necessary. I’m sure our boy over there has a few stories about people who did things to him thinking they were necessary, and they were _wrong._ ”

Rey and Kylo both wince at that, and Jon looks fairly satisfied at having gotten the idea across. He takes a bite of the sandwich. “So, next up, time at the party?”

Kylo slumps back into his chair. “If I say, no, what happens?”

“Nothing. You stay here. People don’t see you. They don’t develop positive associations with spending time with you. They don’t chat with their friends about how they got to meet you and your lady. They don’t—“

He sits back up. “Got it.”

Rey takes a sip of her drink, and then says, “Lead us to the party.”

   

  

* * *

20:00 _The Supremacy_

 

“General.”

Threepio’s back is turned, and for a… not heartbeat, because, of course, he does not have a heart that beats, but for a moment, he can’t remember that the young man in gray with an Order badge is talking to _him,_ but Artoo beeps at him, reminding him that he’s the General in question, so…

He turns to face the soldier in front of him. One of Frakes’ Stormtroopers who cleaned up nicely and had enough manners to be put in charge of keeping visitors amused. Given the fact that he’s still a non-com, it’s clear that whomever he’s entertaining isn’t _that_ high of a level. Still, it wouldn’t do to annoy any of their guests. “Squad Leader TU-9987?”

“Sir, we have another guest who would like to chat about using the _Supremacy_ for a meeting.”

“Excellent, Squad Leader. I have a moment, is now convenient for…”

“Lord and Lady T’Quelleth of the Pnia System.”

“…the Lord and Lady to chat?”

“Yes, sir. They were hoping to talk sooner rather than later.”

“Good, bring them by.”

 

 

* * *

And five minutes later, he has two very… posh… people sitting in front of him in his office.

His _office._ Because he’s a _General._ And Generals have things like offices, and _staff,_ (He hasn’t hired anyone, yet, though Jon tells him that having at least ten people reporting directly to him is common at his rank. And those people will have people who report to them, and… It’s amazing to him what’s happening with this.) and people who do nothing but keep track of his meetings and calendar and…

It’s a shift.

He’s not used to being the person people want to meet. He’s used to being the person they meet while waiting to get to the person they want to meet.

But the T’Quelleths are here to talk to _him._

He bows to them before seating himself, and Artoo consents to fetch some drinks and offer them around. (He does make a snide comment about how he _is not_ part of Threepio’s staff, and he bloody well needs to hire someone to do this because it’s not his job. Threepio ignores it.)

“I’ve been told you’re interested in the Order’s services?”

“We are,” Lord T’Quelleth says. “In the next year, our oldest son will come of age. As such he will be expected to marry. We have three potential spouses in line, but… negotiations can be… tricky.”

Lady T’Quelleth takes over. “What my husband means is, we have two ‘safe’ options. And a third, which is a bit of a long shot. If we can come to a settlement, things would be… advantageous, for both our societies.”

“And who is your long shot?” Threepio asks.

“Isolda D’Muir,” Lord T’Quelleth replies.

Threepio nods. “Of the Lranian system?”

“Yes,” Lady T’Quelleth says.

“And your system and hers has been at war for the last twenty-six years. With, if you’ll forgive the indelicacy, disastrous results all around.”

“That would be an accurate read on the subject,” Lord T’Quelleth says. “Put plainly, both our royal house and theirs is on the verge of collapse. If we keep fighting much longer, neither of our houses will survive.”

“So you wish to try the traditional marriage pact to put things to rest.” Off the top of his head, Threepio can think of 76,049,847 times this has happened in the past, and 42,458,908 times where it worked. It’s not a guaranteed win, but probably as good if not better than any of their other options.

“Exactly. That said, as of this point, feelings are still… running high…” That’s a delicate way of saying that the last battle ended less than seven days ago, and cost both houses multiple thousands of casualties. “And should our son set foot on their home world, or Isolda set foot on ours…”

Lady T’Quelleth doesn’t need to finish that thought. Threepio does for her, to just to make sure they understand that he knows how the game is played. “You expect an assassination attempt within minutes at the least, hours at the longest, a successful one within a month, and after that, no chance of things ever coming to peace.”

“Exactly,” Lord T’Quelleth responds. “So, in an effort to actually smooth things over, we’d like to see about having you host the peace negotiations, a wedding if things go well, a place for both of them to live for at least five years, let those high feeling start to fade, and to guarantee security for all of it.”

Threepio can’t smile, but he is pleased. This sounds like _exactly_ what they’ll be good at. “I have a feeling we can arrange that. Granted, Order security is _thorough._ So, before we get things into play, I’m going to need guarantees from everyone involved that you’ll allow us to do our job.”

“And what would that involve?” Lord T’Quelleth asks.

“At the very least, your ships won’t come within a lightyear of the _Supremacy._ We will send our people to you, pick up you and your things, search everything more carefully than you can possibly imagine. If we’re escrowing goods or credits, we will assess them to make sure they are what you say they are. No weapons will be allowed on your persons, or in your goods. We do not care if whatever it is is a ceremonial weapon of great sentimental worth, it will not come with you to our ship. We will bring you and your goods here, allow you to take care of business with as much security as we deem necessary, and then we’ll return you and whatever goods are going with you to your home. If your son is the kind of person who enjoys his privacy, he will likely not enjoy living here. We can make sure that his personal security is discreet, but we cannot guarantee it, especially if Lady D’Muir is one of those with high feelings, without keeping someone near him at all times unless he’s in a secure room, alone. Likewise, she would have her own personal security, too. If everyone agrees to those basic terms, we can see about setting the rest of it up.”

The T’Quelleth’s nod. Lady T’Quelleth adds, “The home for our son and possible daughter-in-law… In addition to secure, it would have to be… nice.”

“Are your own rooms not adequate in regards to niceness?” Threepio adds, knowing they have to be good enough, or they wouldn’t be asking about this.

“They’re fine. Very comfortable, for a visit. Somewhat small for a home…” Lady T’Quelleth says.

“Very small for an embassy,” Lord T’Quelleth adds.

Now, _that_ interests Threepio. There would certainly be value to offering formal diplomatic space, secure, open, diplomatic space, where, should something slip through the security the blowback wouldn’t immediately hit the home world. A place where it’d be easy to have off the books meetings as well as on the books. He’d smile if he could.

“If all parties are interested, we can, for the correct considerations, make sure that they have a suite in keeping with their status. And if said status were to become some level of embassy for the newly united T’Quelleth-D’Muir house, accommodations can certainly be arranged.”

For a moment, Threepio’s almost nervous about saying that. Almost. They made him a General, so he’s going to command, and if Jon or Ben doesn’t like it, well… He doesn’t have to be here. It’s a remarkably freeing feeling. Artoo hasn’t said anything. He knows enough to not interrupt now, but later he’s going to tease him about it.

Lord T’Quelleth nods. “Considerations… And… what might those be?”

Threepio would smile if he could. He knows he’s got them. If the D’Muirs can be talked into this… “We offer an array of potential payment options. Credits are, of course, always welcome, but we can make do with almost anything. For example, if you and the D’Muir were to be not fighting, neither of your societies would need nearly as many battleships. We of course, being in the security business, can always use battleships.”

“And being in the security business, you may also have an interest in… hand weapons?” Lady T’Quelleth says.

“I’m certain we could find a use for them. Or perhaps, for the manufacturing plants that make them?”

That gets both T’Quelleths nodding. “Interesting. You’ve given us much to think about.”

“I’m glad to hear that, My Lord and Lady. In fact, if you like, our diplomatic department could handle arranging the first meeting with the D’Muirs, taking care of everything. All you’d need to do make sure your negotiators are where we ask they be so we can pick them up on time.”

The T’Quelleths smile.

Lord T’Quelleth says, “General, I thank you for this meeting. I have a feeling this is the start of a profitable relationship.”

“Excellent, My Lord. And I too look forward to seeing you again.”

 

 

* * *

00:30 1/2/2 _The Supremacy_

It’s a quiet chunk of hallway. And the reason it’s quiet is that this is a part of the ship that isn’t doing much today. “Everyone” is off, which means pretty much no one is in the training sims today.

That makes a certain amount of sense to Yakkon Keth. Everyone’s at the parties, or maybe on duty if duty is something that _has_ to happen, but… No one _has_ to be on the training sims. Not today.

That said, if no one is using the training sims today, then why does he have to be in here overseeing four droids, making sure they get into each simulator and clean them out?

Someone didn’t think that through.

Or maybe Lt. KT-5928 just has it in for him, and made him stay on duty just to bust his stones. He’s always pretty snotty about the trainees that actually joined. Treats them as hard as he can get away with, sniffing at them like they leave a bad stink in the air.

Though, rumor has it, that’s just the way the Numbers are. Poor bastards had the souls ripped clean out of ‘em and all that’s left is hate and spite.

Either way, Yakkon will not be distraught to see the last of the Lieutenant. Five more months on this rotation, and then he’s onto deep-space non-atmo flight training. He can’t _wait._

He’s grousing, to himself, and the droids maybe, though these little guys don’t talk, barely even beep, about how the Numbers wouldn’t know a good time if it walked up and sucked their shafts, when he hears footsteps and quiet voices.

Great, someone else to deal with. He tries to look like he’s actually doing something vaguely useful. The bloody droids can do the damn job themselves, they don’t actually need any sort of person with them, but… Keep an eye on the droids is the job, so he’s fucking doing it, instead of being up on the E deck doing some fucking.

(Resh, his bunkmate, said the Specs are on sale today, patriotism or something. He doesn’t care why, 10% off tuffing and sucking is his idea of a grand day, and fuck if he’s gonna miss that! He just hopes the sale is still going when he gets off duty, at 02:00.)

He’s behind one of the training sim pods, and hears, “What do you think they do down here?” Woman’s voice, quiet, an accent he’s not familiar with, pleasant though.

“You know, I don’t actually know.”

His eyes go wide. _That_ voice he knows. That one’s been broadcast all over the _Supremacy_ all day.

The footsteps are getting closer, and he can hear one of the pods being opened.

He peeks around to see the Master and his… lady friend… no one’s entirely sure who she is, though that snog they shared earlier certainly made some things clear, are looking at the inside of one of the sim pods.

A frisson of fear starts, and then stops; it’s one of the clean ones. _Fucking hell and thank you Iuna for that!_

Supposedly, since the rally, The Master’s been wandering around the ship all day. Meeting people. Asking what they do and how. He’s heard that TR-9908 saw him, talked to him, said he’s a lot taller in person than he seems from further away, but he’s almost doubtful of that. 08’s a good guy, for a Number, but he does like to pretend he’s higher up than he actually is. He’d be the sort to say he saw the Master whether he did or not. (Plus, how the fuck could the Master be bigger in person? The man looks like a Wookie on holovids, and there’s no way he’s actually three meters tall.)

“The setup is a lot like one of our fighters.” The Master slides in. He’s big for it. (Yakkon smirks, he’s the size he’s supposed to be. 08’s full of shit.) These are for first year fliers, and they’re normally half his age, and maybe four-fifths his size.

They’re quiet for a moment, while the Master does something, flips the sim on apparently. “Oh… Flight training simulation.”

“This isn’t how you learned to fly?” the lady asks.

He hadn’t known the Master was a pilot.

“No. I started on the standard TIE/INSSS, and moved onto a TIE/FO, and finished with my TIE Silencer. I’ve never used a sim.”

_What freaking maniac taught him to fly on a live ship? Holy Force that’s bleedingly stupid!_

The girl crawls in with him, settling herself on his lap. The Master’s hands come to her waist, and his lips touch her shoulder. Yakkon’s attention sharpens… Shit… Maybe… He takes a quarter step to the side, so he’s got a better view. Catch the Master and his pet in action… Shit, that’d be a show! The girl’s kind of light on tits but she’s got an ass for days, and if he got the angle right… Shit _that’d_ be a view!

The Master does kiss her. And she makes some sort of comment about keeping a steady hand on his shaft while reaching behind her and wriggling her hips a bit. The Master smirks, and kisses her again. And for a second, his hand is moving toward her breast and then stops dead.

He kisses her cheek and then gives her a little boost, out of the sim.

Yakkon’s certain of two things: he’s been caught watching, and there’s no possible way the Master could have seen him. He’s got line of sight on the Master, but the Master would have to turn his head to have line of sight on him. His Lady doesn’t have line of sight on him. And there are no reflective surfaces inside the sim.

His heart is racing, because he’s half expecting the Master to march up and eviscerate him here, now, on the spot for peeking. But the Master just takes his Lady’s hand, and they walk off the deck, silent, though… Yakkon could swear they’re talking, but… He just can’t hear anything.

 

 

 

* * *

01:00 1/2/2 _The Supremacy_

 

“Mum!”

Mirina Frakes is waiting in her son’s rooms when he finally comes home at the end of the parties.

“Jon.” She gives him a gentle smile, and pats the sofa next to her. That’s making him feel nervous. Gentle smiles generally go along with bad news. He sits next to her. “You look tired.”

 

 

“I am. I’m off for the next three days though, so that’ll help.”

She nods. “You like him, don’t you.”

He doesn’t need to ask which _him_ is in play here. Certainly not either of the two he charmed into a blind corner yesterday.  (Though he rather liked both of them, too. And if he’s ever in the Xquelxior or Brannath systems, he’ll look them up.) “Yeah, I do.” She’s really looking at him. And he knows what she’s asking but not willing to say. “Not that much. He’s a good boss, and I think friend, but… Nothing like that. He’s the most married man in the galaxy from what I can see. There’s no room for me, or anyone else, in there.”

She nods. That meets her assessment of the Master and his Lady, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone got an inappropriate crush. “Good.” She’s quiet for another moment. “I noticed you were in and out throughout the party.”

“What party planner isn’t?”

That gets a mild glare. “Uh huh… Yes, you were… vigorously… attending to the details… With… several… guests?”

“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes. Once it became clear his Mom wasn’t going to get him bound to some well-connected Lady through an ‘oops’ of a pregnancy, she decided his ‘promiscuous’ ways were inappropriate. They likely always were, at least by Imperial sexual mores, but she was willing to look the other way if it got him married to a high-born lady. “I’m all about the details.”

Two men, one woman, yes, he’d _thoroughly_ tended to his _details._ He does make a mental note to head to the medbay tomorrow or the next day. He wasn’t as careful as he should have been with one of the men, but he was so damn pretty, and it’d been a million years since he’d done it without a slick, and… Better get checked out sooner than later. If he caught something, it’d be better to get the shots before it became symptomatic.

Normally, his Mom would have given him a little smack for the comment, or maybe the details he tended, but she doesn’t. Her face and voice are sad and quiet as she says, “When you were out, he told Amelda Long he’s Leia Organa’s boy.” It’s clear from her voice that she expects this to be a bomb. And it’s even clearer from her next sentence, “We’re expanding the business, the brand… If you want… I know Coruscant won’t be a going concern, not for you, but… I’m setting up Omara and Helene in their own branches, Tasha and Junni are staying with me. I can set you up, too, any world you like. You don’t… have to feel like you’re stuck here, okay?”

Jon sighs. He supposes he could have been a tad more specific when he told Kylo not to mention who his parents were to his Mum, and spelled out that he needed to not mention it to anyone, but… It was going to get out sooner or later. “I know, Mom. Have for a while.”

“Jon,” it eases out of her in a shocked breath. “How…” He’s never seen her look more hurt. “He killed your father.”

“He wasn’t even conceived when dad died.”

“His mother—“

“Yeah, I know. But Dad got his own back. Or got his own first. Took out Organa’s entire planet. Killed her mom and dad, cousins, family, entire royal line, the whole damn planet, right?”

“They were Rebels!”

“And we were Imperials, and there was a huge fucking war on, and a shit ton of people died, Dad and three of Kylo’s grandparents among them, and if we keep score for things like that against people who weren’t even born, like Kylo and I, all we’re going to get is eternal heartache, so stuff it! He didn’t kill anyone, not in that war. Dad’s not on him. And it’s not my fault he doesn’t have any grandparents, so just... Leave it!”

“Jon… We lost… Everything…”

His eyes narrow. “ _We_ bloody well didn’t. And I, personally, didn’t lose shit, because I never had it. He was onboard when I was born. We _never_ even saw each other. Yes, I know he was your husband, and if anyone can you look you in the eye and say, _I understand,_ it’s me. None of the girls know, but _I do_ , so don’t just sit there and look depressed at me. _I get it_. _I know._ And I am telling you, as someone who has chosen to work this closely with this man, that he is worth our respect and alliance. And beyond that, if we’re going to have the sort of galaxy where your grandkids and my nephews and nieces don’t have to commiserate with us about how bad losing a spouse in some fucking pointless act of intergalactic violence hurts, then you’ll throw in behind him, too, and help us to build a functional Empire.”

“He’s not an Emperor.”

“And both of us know that’s shit. That’s how he’s putting it in his mind so he can deal with it, and I don’t care if he calls himself The Master or the Lord High Poo-bah of the Order or whatever the else fuck he likes. He’s The Emperor, and he’s building an Empire, and I’m in. You can be in or not as you see fit, but if you can’t bury your hate for his parents, then I can’t help you. If you can’t bury it, you never get to move forward.”

She looks so hurt. “Jon… He’s not… They weren’t just some random Rebels. His parents, personally, with their own two hands, killed your father.”

Jon shakes his head, gets up, pours himself a double shot of vodka, and slams it back. He’s much to sober for this conversation. When the burn fades from his throat, he says, “If we’re going that route, Lando Calrissian killed him. That’s what the history vids showed. Lando’s the one who got the shot off that took out the Death Star, and last I checked, he’s dead, so everything’s all wrapped up neat and tidy.”

“Jon…” She sounds so hurt by all of this.

“Mom…” He sighs. “It’s not on him. There’s a ton of stuff you can put on him, like the entire Hosnian system, but if you’re going to do that, it’s as much on me as it is on him.” He slumps back onto the sofa. “Force, there’s so much blood on all of our hands. Hundreds of billions of lives, snuffed out in a heartbeat. And I fucking cheered. Got so wrapped up in it when it was happening. The Force bloody well slapped all of us who did. Starkiller and the _Supremacy_ were wrecked a week later, and most of us died for it.

“We can’t… It doesn’t erase, or even out, not really. But if we’re keeping vendettas going forever, we never get to peace. It never gets better, and… I’m in the better business. You going to join me?”

Her teeth grit.

Jon’s almost tempted to mention that Kylo killed his father, and broke his mom’s heart by joining the First Order, but… He can just feel that’s dirty laundry that doesn’t need airing right now, and if that’s coming out, it’s not coming out of him. Also, more importantly, if this is going to work, his mother’s got to get behind Kylo’s now, who he is and what he’s doing, not the man who burned Leia Organa.

She doesn’t say anything, but stands up, ready to go to her own rooms.

“Mom…”

She shakes her head. “We’re tired. We’ll talk again.”

He’s fairly sure that means she’s going to try and get him out of here again. But, maybe he’ll nudge her in the direction he wants, too.

 

 

* * *

1/2/2 10:00 Lirium

 

“You found it?” Jacen asks Magiit as she fiddles with the holo vid system in the cottage he shares with Critt.

“Just about.” She waves him off, not being a big fan of people hovering over her while she’s doing tech stuff.

It shouldn’t be that hard to get recordings of the First Day speeches and news of the Last Night party, especially since Jacen was part of the Order and knows what channels to watch, but… Someone, and Jacen’s thinking it might have been Critt’s parents, since technically, it’s their holo vid comm, put in some sort of blocker, so it doesn’t get certain channels, and…

Magiit’s been jiggering it for a while.

“They’re home, right?”

Jacen clears his mind and gets a feel for the cottage about a half klick down the only road that makes up their settlement on Lirium. “Yeah. Sleeping now.”

“Must have been a long day if they’re still in bed,” Savarah says.

“Maybe they’re just celebrating,” Elias adds. “You told us they like to _celebrate_ right, Critt?”

Critt holds up his hands. “Not going there. Besides, he said sleeping, not fucking.”

“Okay, first off, if I even let my mind get near them and something like that’s going on, Ren’s going to skin me alive. I am _not_ going there. Second of all, eeewww!” Jacen says.

His four friends all laugh at that. Critt starts shoving some of the stuff off his bed, so they’ll all have room to sit and watch. He can feel that Magiit’s getting close to done.

“Got it. Force, Critt, your parents were paranoid. They had two thirds of the channels locked down,” Magiit says.

“Yeah… Well…” Critt says, flaring angry, sad, and embarrassed. They all pull back from that. Talking about Critt’s parents is still something of a sore spot. Savarah lays a hand on his shoulder, and he tilts his hand, rubbing his cheek against it.

Jacen _does not glare._ He does take a deep breath and forces his emotions to behave. Last thing any of them need right now is him getting stupid and jealous.

 

 

He, along with the rest of them, crowd onto Critt’s bed, and if he’s _right next_ to Critt, well, it’s a tiny screen. Fairly small bed, too. Right now, it’s just a standard news feed. Day to day Order stuff, fairly boring. But eventually it loops around and…

“See, I told you she was beautiful!” Magiit says.

It’s footage of Rey and Kylo in a receiving line, greeting people.

“Good Gods,” Savarah’s got her hand over her mouth, hiding her grin. “He looks like he’s expecting someone to pull a knife on her.” Protective is just radiating off of Kylo, his arm around Rey, as he nods and she clasps hands.

“No, he does not. Trust me, none of us want to see what he’d actually look like if he thought she was in danger,” Jacen says.

“Yeah. I think that’s what he thinks a polite smile looks like,” Elias says, watching Kylo greet whomever is next in line.

“Okay, to me, that looks like he’s baring his teeth,” Savarah says.

They see Jon move up, but none of them know who Jon is, so there’s rising tension as they see him keep moving closer, and Critt says, “Oh, shit, he’s gonna flat out smack that bitch into next week if he doesn’t stop crowding in.”

But Kylo doesn’t. Actually, he relaxes as this strange guy kisses Rey’s cheek, and then he lets go of her, taking her hand instead of keeping her pulled to his body.

“Okay, who is that?” Jacen says. “He’s got to know that guy.”

The other four are nodding. “Well… He’s got to know that guy _well._ No way he lets some stranger slobber on Rey,” Magiit says.

“Maybe they’re friends?” Elias says.

“Do you think he has friends?” Savarah replies.

Jacen nods. “I don’t think he’s got a lot of them. But he’s got Rey, so he’s probably got some friends, too.”

“Just because you want to be his friend doesn’t mean he’s got other ones,” Critt shoots back at him.

“He got on well enough with you and Ostrae. The man made cookies with you. I think he can do friends,” Jacen says back.

They stop bickering as the footage shifts, to the throne room, and the guests mingling. It’s a propaganda puff piece. Mostly blathering about how fancy and wonderful everything was. Eventually it heads to the dinner, and they see Rey and Kylo enter. Kylo pulling the chair with his Force. (“Show off,” Jacen mutters, planning on whipping that trick out as soon as he can use it properly.) They watch as he waits for Rey to sit, and then sits with her.

“They’re so pretty,” Savarah says.

Magiit’s got a soft look in her eyes, too. “They really are.” She looks at the others. “You think they’ll let us go along for some of these things?”

That’s an idea that’s never occurred to any of them, but… “You know,” Jacen says. “I mean, we’re young, but… not stupidly so. There are probably other young people at these things, and… It’s always good to have people who listen, right?”

Elias’s eyes light up. “And, maybe… keep people in the right frame of mind. Properly respectful and all.”

“Or maybe not. Remember what Poe said about some of his missions, where he’d try to get people riled up to see what they really think. We’d be _so_ good at that,” Critt says, looking at Jacen.

“I’m better at talking than listening,” Jacen says.

“You’re good at both,” Magiit replies. “Still… Even I’m good at listening. Even without the Force, you just, pay attention, and… People talk.”

“They do,” Savarah says. “Back when I was waiting tables, they talked about everything. People like me were just… invisible.”

“We get all dressed up; we’re not going to be invisible,” Elias says.

“Well, some of us might,” Critt adds. “Even all dressed up.” He smiles a little at that, fairly sure that he can do invisible, or, at least learn how to.

The news shifts, and now it’s footage of Ren’s First Day Speech. Not the whole thing, just the highlights, which, apparently include him snogging the hell out of Rey at the end.

All five of them are giggling at that.

“Gods, he’s like a big, horny puppy!” Savarah says, shaking her head. “So, this is the man that kept half the galaxy petrified?”

“That’s _not_ how Finn sees him,” Jacen says. He knows Finn avoids him, because, of course, he likes Ren, and Finn doesn’t, and he’s gotten a good feel for the images/terrors in Finn’s mind, so he doesn’t blame him for not being Ren’s biggest fan, but… It’s annoying the man won’t get within ten meters of him right now, afraid his affection for Ren will rub off or something.

“I know,” Savarah says. “I mean… We watched the Qualee footage, too. So… I know, but…” But they’re showing Ren sweeping Rey back into a kiss, again, the voice on the news feed sounding amused and pleased to see that apparent the Master has found a _beloved companion_ and very little is known about Mistress of the Maji Rey, but as they know more, they’ll share it.

Loud knocking sounds on Critt’s door. Finn’s voice. “If you all are done hiding out in here, we’ve still got the midday meal to get cooked, and greens picked, and the new teaching droid, MX-68, is ready to go, so there are lessons this afternoon…”

And with that, the viewing party breaks up, and the Maji teens head off for their daily chores.

 

 

* * *

1/3/2

 

“Mum…” Orlac Calrissian doesn’t hate calls home to his mom. He just enjoys literally everything, including deep root tooth cleanings, more.

“Really, Orry… It’s time. It’s beyond time. It’s-“

“The nine millionth time we’ve had this conversation. I’m not coming back to the Corporation.”

“It’s your _home,_ Orry.”

“Art is my home, Mum. The Corporation was Dad’s home.”

His mom sighs.

“What else is up? You aren’t calling just to annoy me about the Corporation.” She does that six times a year, and it’s a good month early for her usual call.

“We found your cousin. Maybe…”

 

 

Orlac blinks. He’s got six cousins, they run the Corporation, none of them are missing… Except… Gods, he hasn’t thought about _him_ in forever. “Ben? You found, Ben?”

“Maybe. Do you pay any attention to the Order out there in your temple to political neutrality?” Her voice is sarcastic. The Calrissian Corp has always been political neutral, not in the explicit way Orlac’s school is, but in a more lucrative manner of dealing with anyone and everyone who has the credit to buy their goods and services.

“Not since it ceased to be the First Order and the Resistance fell apart.” Though that isn’t _strictly_ true. But what his Mum doesn’t know about what he does here is… well, pretty much everything about why he’s here. It’s easier that way.

His mum nods. “Rumor has it, the new Master of the Order, Kylo Ren, was Ben Solo once upon a time.”

“Rumor?” he asks.

“The first year celebrations were recently, and a few friends went, and according to them, he told Amelda Long, of the United Federation of Byltheen Systems, that he was Leia Organa’s boy.”

Orlac blinks. “I remember when Uncle Han came to see if Dad could get him back from Snoke, but…”

Annilie Calrissian nods, again. “It always weighed heavily on him that he turned Han down.”

“I know, Mum.” Orlac was still at home when Uncle Han and Uncle Chewie, Han frantic, Chewie resigned, came to Lando for help. And he still remembers the weeks they spent, pouring over everything they could find about the First Order, about Snoke, about every scrap of intel they could get. And he remembers the screaming fight between Han and Lando, because, in the end, Lando wouldn’t commit his men to it.

“I’m not getting five million men killed to fail at getting your boy back, Han!”

“YOU’VE GOT TO!”

“Go home, Han. Go to Leia. Cry about it with her, and then… I don’t know, try writing him a letter or something. He’ll come home when he wants to.”

“Snoke’s not going to let him go!”

Lando’s eyes were tired, defeated, and Han’s were bright with rage tears. “I know. But the only way he’s getting out of there is on his own. There’s not a single private army in existence with enough manpower to get him out, and even I don’t have the credits to bankroll enough of my competitors to get a force big enough to end the First Order, let alone end it tidy enough to make sure Ben gets out alive.” Lando shook his head, laying his hand on Han’s shoulder, and Han yanked away, burned by the touch. “It can’t be done, old friend.”

“Don’t give me that ‘old friend’ shit. You’d do it for Orlac.”

Lando had looked away from Han, to Orlac, and said, voice quiet, “I’d want to. But every man with me is someone else’s child, and I can’t send them off just to get killed for a mission I know I can’t succeed at. If we had even a one in a million shot at this, I’d try it, but, we don’t.”

Later, he pulled Orlac aside, kissed him, and Orlac pulled back, he was fifteen and much too old for petting from his father, especially after that conversation. “When you lead, you need to keep in mind that people are with you because they trust you to value them. They’ll go to the ends of the galaxy for you if they think you’ll go to the ends of the galaxy for them, but if you go off and get them killed stupidly, you break that trust.”

Orlac nodded. “What’s Uncle Han going to do?”

Lando had a very sad look in his eyes. “Hopefully, get very, very drunk, and let Chewie make all the real decisions for a while.”

“And what are you afraid he’s going to do?”

“Try and get Ben back himself.”

“Suicide?”

“Yes.” He gave Orlac another hug, holding him close.

“Orry…” His mother’s voice brings him back to the present.

“Mum?”

“You weren’t listening at all, were you?”

“No. I was remembering the last time I saw Uncle Han.”

His mom nods at that, understanding. “Orry, it’s a rumor, and I don’t know if it’s true, but… Could you check?”

“How? I don’t have ears in the Order.” Which is literally true, if not true in spirit.

“No. For as silly as this art stuff is,” he sighs, a long, drawn out sound, “I know no one in the galaxy has better eyes than you do. There are recordings of his speech. If it’s Ben, you’d recognize him, right?”

“Mum, I haven’t seen him since I was twelve.”

“Yes, but he was twenty then, so he shouldn’t have changed _that_ much.”

Orlac sighs, thinking about Ben. He, at least back in the day, had an awfully distinctive face. Between the ears and bone structure, he’d stick out. “I’ll look.” He turns to the side, fiddles with his holovid player, and pulls up a feed from the Order. The first few views are from far enough away, Orlac can’t tell. “The hair is the right color, and the ears are similar. I don’t remember Ben being that big, though.”

She’s also looking at the feed. “He always had those enormous ears. The first time I met him was at our wedding, and he was a little guy with these huge ears poking out from messy black hair.”

“It’s not messy now.” The man in the recording has hair smoothed back into a neat pony tail.

The camera moves in on him as he gets into the speech in earnest. The first thing Orlac notices is the scar. Hard not to. “If it’s him, he’s worse for the wear.”

“Someone tried to cut his face in half.”

“Succeeded. Not tried.” Watching the man, The Master, the size of him, the glint of his eyes, Orlac adds, “Probably died for it, though.” He keeps watching. The voice is familiar. Deeper, but the cadence is right. The shape of the mouth, again, is similar, though the lips are larger now. The nose is wrong. Ben always had what Lando called a schnozz. It was always too big for his face, but it used to be straight and narrow. Granted, given the scar, it’s likely that nose has been broken at least once, too. That would certainly account for the skew.

The camera pulls in close. Really close. Orlac pauses the image.

“Same eyes?” Annilee asks.

“Probably. Older, a bit deeper and saggier. The same color.” It’s the moles that sell Orlac on the idea that this is Ben. “It’s him. The moles line up the way they’re supposed to.” He unpauses the video. He sees Ren extend his hand to the crowd, and then turn, extend his hand to a girl, a girl he hadn’t noticed before, and she steps to him, and all of the blood drains out of Orlac’s face.

He sits there, stunned and silent, as Kylo Ren kissed the girl he knows as Rey, the girl Chewie brought to him to learn more about the Force, the girl who left him a bit over a year ago, his entire library in hand, and vanished.

He blinks, remembering his one visit to Luke’s planet, to his Jedi school, and seeing Ben, who was _Ben_ , who was a Jedi then, and there, now, in his arms is another Jedi… or not Jedi… Force user, and…

One of the things Lando had said to Orlac, a long time ago, well before Ben leaving, well before everything fell apart with his art school and the Corporation and everything…

“If you ever get a bad feeling about something, pay attention to it. More gamblers, pirates, smugglers, and traders owe their lives to listening to that little voice than the best blasters, fastest ships, and deadliest aims.”

Orlac is watching, nodding slowly. It’s not a bad feeling, but something, in his guts and heart and bones, is screaming, aware that something’s shifting, and he feels like, for better or worse, he’s supposed to be part of it.

“Orry? Remembering again?”

“Yeah, Mum. You know how Dad used to say, ‘Felt like a shadow crept over my grave?’”

“Yeah. It never made any sense, but yes, I remember it.”

“I’m feeling it right now.”

She looks at him, curious, but he doesn’t say any more. He just remembers how, if he’d been the son his parents wanted him to be, he would have been the second Senator from Cloud City. If he’d done what his parents had wanted to, he would have joined the Senate at the age of eighteen, and if he’d done so, he would have been sitting there, on Hosnian Prime, at the ripe old age of twenty, and been blown to dust with the rest of them.

And, here, now, he’s wondering if all of this truly did happen for a reason, and if he’s here, now, because in the not wildly distant future, Calrissian and Solo are, again, going to make some history.

 


	2. The Order of the Maji: The Plan

1/2/2

 

00:55 _The Supremacy_

 

“So, now what?” Frakes says to Kylo and Rey as they wander back to the party, looking… refreshed. He’s got the sense they may have found their own blind corner, somewhere. He’s not going to ask.

Rey yawns, a wide, tired, near jaw-dislocating inhale/exhale. (Or maybe they’re so tired they’ve come round through the other side.)

Kylo wants to yawn, but that takes more energy than he wants to spend. “Sleep. You sleep. We sleep. We’re off tomorrow. You’re off tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that as well. And then, back to it again.”

Rey’s leaning against Kylo. “Dinner. Tomorrow or the day after. A real dinner. At our place.”

“You, us, Poe.” Kylo nods at that. “The first meeting of the Order of the Maji.”

Jon chuckles a bit at that. “Even if I’m not Maji?”

“You can be the Order bit. Poe’ll be the Maji, and we’ll meet in the center,” Kylo says.

“But not tonight. Sleeping, now,” Rey adds, pulling them back to Lirium, where, finally, the day ends.

 

 

* * *

09:25 1/2/2

 

In the morning, at breakfast, as they’re drinking their coffee and eating some spiced porridge, Rey says, “Just Jon?”

Kylo nods. “Right now, just Jon. And… I can’t tell you why, other than that’s just how it feels. Kinear and Schiff, and Ellie, I know they’re part of this game, somehow, but… Not here, not this time.”

“But Poe?”

He nods. “Yeah. Poe’s supposed to be here, and… honestly, I think Rose is, too, but I don’t think she’d come to this, yet.”

“I can ask her. Mirina more or less ordered her to be at the next Order shindig, all fancied up, and playing the game.”

Kylo laughs. “How’d that go over?”

“I don’t think she’s sold on the idea. But I’ll ask if she wants to come to some of the smaller, just us gatherings.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“So, Rose? But not Finn?”

He shrugs. “Maybe I’m just more comfortable with her. Or maybe I already know he’ll turn it down flat? How does it feel to you?”

Rey skirts that, fairly sure both are true. “Poe and Jon…” She half-smiles. “How much of this is that they’re commanders we trust, and how much of it is both of us hoping they’ll like each other?”

“For right now, I’m sticking with commanders we trust.” There’s a spark in his eye, though.

Rey sips her coffee, and takes another bite of the porridge. Then she lays her cheek against his shoulder and her hand on his. “I think, feel… part of us balancing is _this._ ” She looks to their home, and them, her in a robe, him in a loose pair a trousers, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, both of them planning on finishing eating, and then going back to bed for a very lazy day of napping and just _being_ with each other. “And, I know there are religions out there where sex and love and… this… is part of it. Where they think those are good things that… whichever god, gave us, and as such, we’re supposed to seek these things out, and enjoy them.”

 

 

He adds just a bit more salt to his porridge. “Would have been nice if the Jedi had felt that way.”

“Yeah. But… We don’t have to be Jedi, and I think we can feel that way, and… Having a home and love and sex and good things, pleasure and comfort,” she eyes the porridge, seasoned the way he likes it, eaten for enjoyment and nourishment “and someone whose body cherishes yours,” he lays his free hand on her thigh, “and… And I think the Maji get to have that and encourage it.”

He smiles at that. “So, the Maji will have some opinions on _communing._ ”

“At least to the degree that it’s a good thing that we should encourage.”

“I can get behind that. And possibly drag Jon into it.”

She laughs at that. And then yawns. “Later. We’re eating and going back to bed.”

He stretches a bit, and also yawns. “Yeah.”

 

 

* * *

14:58 1/2/2

 

Later, after a quiet nap, and quiet sex, a quick lunch, and another quiet nap, when they’re both under the blankets, spooned together, warm and relaxed, Rey says, “I think pleasure matters. If we believe that our feelings matter, that they’re real and valid and important, then… this…” she floods him with all that she’s feeling right now, not just the warm, mental contentment of them, together, but also the sensation of clean, soft sheets, and his hair silky and warm, his skin, the faint hint of cologne still on it from the day before, the pleasant thrum of his breath against her neck, and how _good_ all of that makes her feel.

He smiles against her shoulder, lifting up a bit so he can see her face more easily, and she rolls to her back, to kiss him gently.

“I think this _matters._ That, feeling like this… This is part of the balance. Bad, horrible things are going to happen to us, and we can’t avoid it. We’ll hurt, that’s just part of being alive, so we shouldn’t deny ourselves time like this.”

He kisses her, lips gliding over hers. There’s a warm, sated pleasure in that. Neither of them are particularly interested in anything erotic right now, but the touch still feels good.

When he pulls back, he says, “Shall we be hedonists, then?”

 

 

She doesn’t know what that word means, and he catches it, so fills in the blanks. Rey nods, and then says, “Tasha and Mirina know that we’re intending to hit Canto Bight at some point, and Tasha mentioned that she thought it was tacky. The sort of place for people who just wanted to burn credits.”

He’s listening, but, he’s never been to Canto Bight, and would assume any sort of casino is about burning credits. Maybe earning some, too, but for most of the people going, it’s just an expensive way to have fun.

She can feel his thought on that, and goes on. “There’s burning credits and burning credits. Apparently Canto is about showing off how little they mean to you, and how many of them you’re willing to set on fire. They’ve got a drink with gold flakes in it.”

“Why?” Kylo asks, not getting that at all.

Rey has a little naughty smile as she says, “Apparently so you can shit gold after. You can’t taste it. It doesn’t make the drink any better, just more expensive.”

Kylo sniggers. “I take it Lady Frakes has opinions on that.”

“I’m not sure if she did, but Tasha does. She’d rather get a better drink. And I think that’s what I’m meaning by pleasure. Things we can actually, tangibly enjoy. Not fancy for the sake of fancy. But…” she smiles, “like your white shorts, fancy for the sake of genuinely feeling better.”

He nuzzles against her shoulder. “That feels right to me.”

“Good. Let’s see if anyone else likes it.”

Kylo yawns and stretches. He’s not sleepy, but just being here, with nothing else to do, feels really good. “Tomorrow.”

She nuzzles against him. “Tomorrow.”

 

 

* * *

1/3/2

 

“You’re back!” Rose says when Rey finds her out behind the microfarms, messing with the water pump.

“I’m back.” Rose is brushing the snow off the connection between the pump and the waterline. “Problems?”

“The flats are getting dry. Which means we’re not getting the water flow through we need, and…” Rose looks around. Snow, so much snow. “So, the question is, where’s the freeze? In the pump? In the pipes…”

“Is any water moving?”

“A little. Everything is still damp, but not as wet as it should be.”

“Great. Uh… Give me a moment.” Rey heads into the microfarm, where Opal, Torine, Cassie, and Xanth are all, by hand, watering the plants, grumbling about how the damn water’s practically frozen by the time they get it to the microfarm, and waiting for it to thaw back out once it’s in here is annoying.

“Snow,” Rey says. “Pack the snow into balls or rods, and then lay it on the dirt where the plants aren’t, we don’t want them to freeze, and then it’ll melt and water the plants, and you don’t have to lug so much liquid water around.”

The kids listen to that, nod, and head off to make snowballs.

Rey goes to the main water valve, and sees if she can get a feel for the flow of the water. It takes a moment, but she can. It’s just easing on in, flowing freely enough here, because inside the farm is warm, but she can feel the constriction, outside… All the way to the lake.

She goes back to Rose, shaking her head. “The pipes aren’t deep enough. It’s frozen all along the line.”

Rose growls quietly. “I was afraid of that.”

“Solutions?”

“Keep the water running. It won’t freeze solid if it’s moving. Dig deeper, under the frost line. Find some sort of heater to keep the water warm enough it won’t freeze in the pipes.” Rose looks out toward the lake. “Granted, none of that will matter at all if the water freezes deeper than the intake.”

Rey groans. “Come on.” They head toward the lake, which these days is just a flat, smoothed over bit of snow amid the gently rolling hills of snow.

“So, how’d it go?” Rose asks as they trudge toward the lake.

Rey knows what _it_ Rose is talking about. “It was… Not bad. Tiring. Stupidly tiring.”

It’s clear that doesn’t make any sense to Rose, and Rey shakes her head. “I know, _stupidly._ We’re not really doing anything, but… It’s just _long._ ”

“But it wasn’t bad?”

“It wasn’t bad. I didn’t make a fool out of myself. I got to meet some interesting people, and a few crashing bores. The food, once we got to have some, was good.”

“Once?”

“We spent three hours saying hello to people, and you don’t get to eat when you do that.”

“Ughk.” Rose winces at that idea.

“Yeah. How about Finn? Did he properly appreciate you?”

Rose sniggers a little, a warm glow lighting her cheeks and eyes. “He seemed to approve of the hair and makeup. And Ren? He was looking awfully appreciative.”

Rey laughs at that. “He did appreciate. And both of us would have liked some alone time to have done something about it, but, apparently, if you’re the host of one of these things, you don’t get to just wander off.” She shakes her head. “It’s so scheduled you barely have time to pee.”

Rose winces. “So, you don’t get to eat, you don’t get to pee, you don’t have time with your sweetie… This doesn’t sound like anything I ever want to do.”

“And I do not blame you, at all. Though, for that matter, I don’t think we’re doing it like that, again, either.”

“So… you’re not going to dragoon me into Mirina’s plans?”

They’re at the pump in the lake, both of them having walked, easily, onto the ice. Rose and Rey both kneel, and begin to shift the snow out of the way. The only good thing about the snow on the lake is that it’s fairly shallow. Mostly because the lake is flat and the wind can just whip the snow right off of it.    

Still, shallow means a third of a meter deep, so Rey and Rose are brushing it aside as Rey says, “I have a feeling fancy gatherings will happen in the future, but the ones we host, we’ll keep them to fewer people, more private, more casual. And anything you ever want to come to, you, and Finn, if he ever wants it, have a standing invite, courtesy of,” her voice goes a little sharp and sarcastic, “The Mistress of the Maji.”

“Ooo… Mistress Rey… How fancy,” Rose says with a grin and a little shove.

Rey rolls her eyes, and brushes away more snow. “You got a laser probe?”

“Of course.”

Rey doesn’t have to say it. Rose sets the tip flush to the ice, and a moment later, they’ve got the reading. “Shit,” Rose says.

Rey nods. “Has it been a full month since we buried it last?”

“Barely.” She scowls at the reading. Part of why the water is sluggish is because the ice has almost covered over the intake. “Finn and Poe sunk the intake a meter under the ice line a month ago.”

Rey rubs her eyes. “We can drill, and sink a heater under there, but…”

“But if it keeps getting colder, we’re going to end up with a little melted out bubble in the ice, and no water.”

Rey nods. “We’ve got to sink it deeper. Likely the pipes, too.”

Rose grits her teeth. “Rey…”

“I know.” They don’t have the equipment to do that, not now. And getting it won’t be cheap and quick. They can do one or the other, but not both.

“Laser drill, a 4867 Krinaa, my dad used to run a crew on one of them. They use them for precision deep mining operation. We don’t need a huge hole, just one deep enough to get under the frost line.”

“One that can dig deep enough to find where the frost line is,” Rey adds.

And Rose nods. “Finn’s not thrilled with the idea of Mistress Rey.” Which is a ‘round about way of bringing up the fact that they _both_ know who can lay hands on that sort of drill, fast and easy.

“Yeah. I figured. And… It was… easier than I was expecting it to be. And it matters. And I should do it. But _I’m_ not thrilled with Mistress Rey, so there’s no reason why he should be, either.” Though that wasn’t exactly, completely true, and apparently it shows on her face.

Rose raises an eyebrow at her.

Rey rolls her eyes. “Fine. Uh… The speech, did you watch that?”

“Yeah. A bunch of the kids did, too.”

“Okay. Uh… The clapping and cheering part was nice. And… After we walked around the _Supremacy_ and just talked to people, and… A lot of them… are really excited… in a good way… about me.”

“What kind of good?”

“Everything from,” she sniggers a bit at this, a bunch of Order members would have just _died_ if they knew that Rey and Kylo could feel what they were thinking, “’Thank the Force someone signed up to fuck that man, he’s been so much calmer ever since,’” Rose starts laughing loudly enough that it echoes across the snow, “to ‘she’s so pretty,’ to just wanting a queen, to… ideas of how this sort of thing is supposed to work, and apparently a lot of them have a queen shaped hole in their idea of how a state works, and they’re happy to shove me into it.”

“I thought that when I saw you all dressed up, too. You look like… The Mistress, or Empress, or Queen, or whatever. You look like you belong.”

Rey shrugs. “I don’t really feel like it, but… I was so ready to mess up every which way, and have them all staring and laughing, or condescending and judging, so a bunch of them looking at me with starry eyes, wondering how big the wedding will be and if they’ll get off time for the celebration, that was a welcome change.”

Rose smiles at that. “So, it wasn’t bad.”

“It wasn’t bad. But… It’s different.” Rey’s never felt particularly afraid of screwing up this part of being Mistress Rey, though. But… now she’s not sure. Because there is an obvious answer to how to get that drill and take care of their water problem. Still… is that moving in the right direction, or away from it… “I’m not thrilled about having Mistress Rey ask for a laser drill, but…”

Rose nods. “By the time Chewie can find one, we won’t have water. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but Dad didn’t just grab one of those drills and use it on day one. He spent years training on them so he could do the job right.”

“Yeah,” Rey replies, looking around at the settlement they built. “Fuck.”

“Rey?”

She shakes her head. So much for not being sure. “I can feel it shifting. Merging.” She pulls The Order of the Maji symbol out from under her shirt. “It’s not going to let me keep doing this, going on our own. The Force… wants this, and getting there means I’ve got to… ask for help.”

Rose flashes her a _get over yourself_ sort of look. “Asking your husband for help shouldn’t be a big deal.”

Rey rolls her eyes in return. “Asking _Kylo_ to help dig this out, isn’t. Yeah, I hate piling anything else onto his plate, but between his saber and my staff, and rigging a few shipstones into some serious heaters, we can likely get a quick fix in that’ll last—“

“Not long enough.”

Rey’s nodding. “Asking Master Ren for a drill, and some people to use it, and maybe a few to help relay the pipes, fast, so we don’t have more than a day or two without water, is different.”

Rose nods. “It is.” And Rey can feel her seeing Lirium with Order men on it. She can feel Rose’s shudder, the memory of when the First Order showed up in Hays Minor still bright in her mind. She can feel Rose’s sense of Finn’s reaction to a collection of Order men showing up, and her second-hand fear on his behalf. And through all of that, she can feel Rose’s practicality, as well. No water means they have to leave. It means the end of their settlement. It means twenty-two kids suddenly going homeless. “Finn and Chewie are going on a run the day after tomorrow.”

“You want me to time it for when they aren’t here?”

“Yeah. Make it easier for everyone involved.”

Rey inclines her head a bit. That’s one way to deal with it. “Are you going to tell him it’s happening?”

Rose glares at the lake, and the heavy gray clouds on the horizon, and the promise of even more snow, soon. “I won’t not tell him.”

“Rose… are you sure…”

“No. Fuck… We’ll talk. We need water. We’re not set to do it fast enough just on our own. We’ve got, maybe,” Rey can feel Rose thinking through the math, how cold it’ll have to get, or stay, to send the ice the handful of centimeters deeper, and shut off their water intake. “three days before the waterline is frozen solid. Less if it gets even colder. And if Finn and Chewie go looking for a drill, in three days they _may_ have found a one, so, get it set on your end, and if this is the Force shoving the Order and the Maji together, then maybe it’s time for Finn and I to go back to living on the _Falcon_.”

Rey nods, understanding, but she adds, “It won’t be home, not really, without you three here.”

Rose nods, too. “I know. It won’t be home without water, either. Get it set. I’ll talk with him. You will, too. But we need water, so, get it set.”

“I will.” Rey half smiles. “So… uh… We’re having dinner at our place tonight. Poe, Kylo and I, and Jon,”

“The Floof?” She only saw Jon for a few minutes, long enough to see he had the same sort of smirk on his face that she had on hers at getting to spend a minute watching the Rens in each other’s company.

“Don’t call him that.” Rey doesn’t exactly know what that word means, she doesn’t think Rose does, either, but she’s sure it’s not a compliment.

“His sister calls him that.”

“And he intentionally lives on the far side of the galaxy from her.”

“Okay, so, the four of you, and…”

“You and Finn and Paige if you want to come. We’re going to try to figure out what the Order of the Maji is and does, and… You’re part of it.”

Rose shakes her head. “Not yet. Let’s see if we can get him to stick around when you’ve got a few storm troopers drilling here.”

Rey can feel Rose’s image. She shakes her head. “They only wear the armor when they’re fighting now.”

“Well, that’s something. He won’t, if he sees them, immediately flash back to any of the fights.”

“Hopefully.”

Rose shakes her head, and then looks back to the microfarms. “In the meantime, let’s get some insulating blankets over the water pumps. It likely won’t help much, but it’ll stave off freezing solid for a bit longer.”

“Yeah, lets. Stick a heater or two under there with them, keep the water moving a little easier.”

    

 

* * *

Kylo heads back to the _Supremacy_ for just two things that day: Jon and supper.

He’s standing in front of Jon’s rooms, waiting for him to come to the door, getting looked at, curiously, by the few people walking down the hall.

Apparently, Masters don’t linger outside their friend’s room waiting for the door? Or maybe they don’t have friends? Or maybe he’s got his hair pulled back in a messy half-pony tail, wearing his casual, really casual, at home, bumming around, one-step-above-pajamas (and the only reason he’s not wearing pajamas is that he doesn’t have any on Lirium, and considers it something of a point of pride that since he’s been with Rey, the ones in his drawer on the _Supremacy_ have stayed in that drawer.) clothing, which is, among other things, not all black. The person who walked by a good thirty seconds ago now was mostly just trying to figure out if it was really him.

After all, the scar is really distinctive, but… not black. Not formal. Not… _The Master._

 

 

The door opens, and Kylo steps into Jon’s rooms and rapidly notices something. Jon’s also in his casual clothing. Kylo’s bumming around at home clothing is a pair of loose slacks, a long sleeve undershirt, and a sweater, wooly socks, and boots. (And when he gets home, it’s likely he toss a blanket over his shoulders, too.)

He’s seen Jon’s casual clothing before. He just didn’t… put it together with the idea that he’d wear it. Jon’s in a light, mid-arm length, button down, with several undone buttons, and light trousers, and shoes, and if he’s got socks on, Kylo can’t see them.

Which means, once he gets to Lirium, he’s going to freeze.

“Do you have… A coat or sweater or jacket or something?” Kylo asks once he gets to that conclusion.

“Why? We’re going to be inside, right?”

“Probably, especially if you don’t have any warmer clothing. But if you want to see the settlement, you’re going to want more clothing. It’s winter, with a vengeance, by the local calendar.”

Jon heads into his room to change, not bothering to shut the door behind him. “What’s _with a vengeance_ mean?” he asks as he begins undoing his belt.

“Snow’s past my knees, and with the heaters on full blast, and the oven on, we can get it to just about 18 inside our house.”

“Oh.” Kylo can hear him rummaging around in there. Then sigh. “I’d been hoping not to wear my uniform, but the greatcoat is going to look stupid as hell with just my usual lounging around wear.”

“Wear what makes you happy. Literally no one will care. Everyone on Lirium is dressing to stay warm.”

A few moments later, Jon’s out of his room, in his full uniform, including his gloves. “Better,” Kylo says. “So, ready to go?” He holds out his hand.

Jon takes it, gingerly.

Kylo waits for him to nod, and _then_ ports him to his home on Lirium.

 

 

* * *

The second time porting is a bit less bizarre than the first. It doesn’t feel like much of anything. It would probably be less creepy and disorienting if he felt like he had moved, but, he doesn’t. One minute he was in his rooms, and now… Jon looks around, “You weren’t kidding about not all black.”

Kylo rarely thinks about their home. It just is. Rey set it up, and she was here, so that’s all it needed for him. But, it’s a really _her_ space. The walls, floors, furniture, appliances, all of it is in light, creamy colors. A splash of blue in the one chair, little wreathes of prairie grass she made, circles of gray-green, rapidly going grayer by the day. Pretty much everything else is white, ecru, cream, or eggshell.

The window sills are black, and the metal keeping the transteel panes in place are black, but besides a few blankets that have wandered over from the _Supremacy_ and some tools, nothing else is black.

Kylo nods at him. “Get comfy. I’ll be back in a second.” And then he’s gone.

A moment, later, in which Jon just looks around, and wonders where Rey is, Kylo’s back with a tray with three bowls on it. “I’m generally in charge of dinner.”

“You mean the cooking crew on the _Supremacy_ is in charge of dinner.”

Kylo half-inclines his head, and tucks the food into the cooker.

“So, who’s here for supper?”

“Us, Rey, and Poe.”

“Tell me more about Poe,” Jon says as he looks out the windows to the tiny settlement around them. From the kitchen window, he can’t see much of it. Most of the development is on the other side of their home. The dome of the chapel is visible, only because it’s got a coating of ice and snow on it, and the stable they built for the Faviers is also in view. The lake is technically in view, except it’s just a flat expanse of snow among somewhat less flat expanses of snow. All of it is tinged greeny-brown by the green sun setting.

Jon’s never seen so much nothing in his life. He’s fairly sure that he could stay here for about three days before he went stark, raving insane.

“He’s a pilot. The son my mother wanted but didn’t get.”

Jon blinks, looking away from Lirium toward Kylo. “Wow… that’s… bitter.”

Kylo half-shrugs. “He’s not much older than I am. Looks, at least in description, similar: pale skin, dark hair, dark eyes. No one’s who’s ever seen both of us is going to mistake one of us for the other, but...” Jon nods. He understands the concept being explained. “He acts a bit like my dad, a lot of the same attitude. Same loves. It’s not his fault that she wanted a little Han and got… me. I’m not annoyed at him for it.”

“Uh huh.” Jon raises an eyebrow at that. He knows a lie when he hears one, and that one’s a whopper.

“ _Now._ I’m not annoyed, at him, now.”

That sounds true. “Better. So…”

“He was on her personal protection detail when they were with the New Republic. He followed her to the Resistance.”

“Which you would have done if you could have?”

Kylo doesn’t actually know that, but… “I like to think it would have worked that way. If… we’d had anything approaching a functional relationship. If I’d been a pilot or politician instead of a Jedi.” His voice is very soft as he says, “If she fucking _asked._ ” His voice goes back to normal as he says, “As for Poe, between us killing the higher ups off, and his own talents, he ended the war Admiral Dameron, second-in-command of the Resistance.”

“How much of each?” Jon asks, as Rey opens the door and walks in, a whirl of snow and frigid air following her.

He shivers at that; Kylo’s not kidding about winter with a vengeance, and he’s less fussed about changing into his full uniform. He feels stupidly formal with it on, here in Kylo and Rey’s home, where both of them are in their casual clothing, but it’s also _cold_. And as the man who approved the specs on the Order greatcoats, he knows that they were designed for two things, to look great, and keep you comfortable in a _wide_ range of temperatures.

“Jon!” She puts two bowls down on the table, then walks to him, and gives his hands a gentle squeeze.

“Rey.”

He watches her greet Kylo with a warm kiss, and then head to the bedroom to take her over coat off. He doesn’t miss that she keeps her jacket and scarf on.

“Didn’t you tell me you’d gotten better insulation and heaters?” Jon asks when Rey comes back.

She sighs. “We got both. And for a good two weeks it was great, and then the temperature dropped twenty-five degrees overnight, and now what used to be our low temperatures are our high temperatures, and…” She shakes her head. “The Kennas said that it was going to get _cold_ and it looks like they’re right.”

“Hopefully though, this is as bad as it gets. There’s two suns for this planet, and the blue one’s gone from the sky round the clock now, so… Hopefully, this is dead of winter, and from here, it’ll just get warmer,” Kylo adds.

Both he and Rey can read the look on Jon’s face, which most readily translates into: _You were insane enough to put a settlement on a planet_ before _doing a full climate survey?_

Rey shrugs a bit. “No one else is here, and it was summer when I got here, so…” She changes the subject, “You’re looking perkier than the last time I saw you.”

They hear the knocking on the door that means Poe’s here.

Kylo goes to get the door, opening it, letting Poe in, as Jon says, “Yeah, well, _someone_ was working my ass off, and _someone_ finally gave me enough time to actually sleep, see my friend, have a decent meal and conversation with her, sleep some more, and then a bit more, and finally get up, eat again, see her again, and start to feel like a real human.”

Rey’s sniggering at that, as Poe pulls off his overcoat, looks around at the lack of places to hang a coat, and then drapes it on the basket near the door, and Kylo says, “Jon Frakes, this is Poe Dameron.”

Jon turns, smiles at him, pleasant enough, and extends his hand. Poe nods, works off his gloves, and takes it. Jon can see Poe’s a little wary, likely because of the uniform, but he has a good, strong, defensive nothing-bothers-me look in place. He doesn’t hold Jon’s hand a second longer than necessary, though.

 

 

Jon says, half to Kylo, half to Poe, “We don’t do titles here?”

Poe rolls his eyes. “These days, just Poe. Master Poe of the Maji, if you’re feeling formal.” It’s clear he’s eyeing Jon’s uniform, wondering how big a deal _formal_ is to Lt. Colonel Frakes.

“And before?” Jon asks. Kylo can feel that matters to him, he’s getting a sense for how _Resistance_ Poe is.

“Commander. That was the only one I had that ever mattered. All of the fancy ones came after we were so short on people as to make them meaningless. You?”

“I’ve been told I’ll be a Grand Marshall as soon as I wish to claim it,” he’s looking at Kylo as he says it.

“Fancy,” Poe says, with a smirk, also looking at Kylo. “Last guy I knew who was jonesing for a Grand Marshall didn’t like me much.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure _jonesing_ would be the word. If it was, I’d likely already have the title.”

Poe nods, and seems to radiate, _fair enough_ though he doesn’t say it.

Jon’s thinking over what they just said, and then asks Kylo, “Master Poe, Master Ren… Is that your formal title as a Maji?”

“I’m Master Kylo, or just Kylo here, depending on which of the little boogers is talking to me. The Master part…” Kylo sighs a bit. “That’s my Jedi rank, and… I kept it when I formed the Knights of Ren, and apparently kept it when we became the Order.”

Poe’s staring at him. “So… you actually got to Jedi Master?”

“Yeah, by the end there were three of us. Luke, Tash, and I.”

“What happened to Tash?” Poe asks, and it’s fairly clear Jon’s thinking it.

Kylo rubs his lips together, uncomfortable radiating off of him. He answers anyway, “I was better with a lightsaber than she was.”

That lands with a thud, everyone catching and radiating Kylo’s uncomfortable back at him. Finally, Poe says, “Here, I’m Poe, and she’s Rey.”

“Not Mistress of the Maji?” Jon asks.

“Not here.” She looks to their table. “Come on, eating to go with talking.” They sit down, each settling in front of a plate.

Kylo grabs the bowls out of the cooker, and both Poe and Jon would have to admit, levitating them out of the oven and pulling them over to sit on the table certainly _looks_ impressive. Once they’re settled, Kylo says, “Pretty informal manners here. Just grab it, put some on your plate, and pass it along if it’s not in easy reach.” As he reaches for the bowl of pickled radishes and carrots, takes some, he says, “I see we’re finally starting to get some produce from the microfarms,” and then passes them to Rey.

Poe nods, then says to Jon, “Greens come in fast. We’ve had them for a while.” And there is a bowl of greens on the table, too. And as Poe mentions them, a bottle of dressing wanders, by itself, out of the cooler. Jon’s not sure if Rey or Kylo did it, but it probably doesn’t matter. It’s, gratifying probably isn’t the right word, but it’s close, that Poe also stops speaking to watch it happen. Jon’s glad he’s not the only one who still goggles at seeing things like this.

When Kylo takes the dressing, kisses Rey’s shoulder, says, “Thanks,” and both of the non-Force users know how the dressing got to the table, Poe continues, “Radishes and carrots… Yesterday was the first day we had any ready to go. We’re not self-sufficient here, yet, but we hope to be at some point.”    

Jon looks out the window again, but it’s not like he can see much. The suns are down, so all he’s got is the reflection of the four of them. “So, you’ve got farms. And children. And… Is this a monastery?”

Poe sniggers at that idea. More at the idea of him being a monk than this place being a monastery. “Uh… Not like any I’ve seen.”

“It’s similar to where I was raised, and you could likely call that a monastery if you liked. There’s the Maji… Which is…” Kylo’s looking to Rey.

“Maybe a philosophy, or possibly a religion, and don’t ask me where exactly to draw the line between those things because even with reading as much as I can get my hands on for more than a year, I just don’t know. It’s…” She takes a drink. “The Force is real. I… back up… Were you raised in any faith or… How’d you start with this stuff?” she asks Jon.

Jon sighs a little, putting a serving of veggies on his plate, and greens, and there are noodles and some sort of biscuits, so, he has a bit of each of them, and then takes the jug that Poe passes over and pours whatever that is into his cup. (Pear cider, non-alcoholic, he’ll find out once he takes a drink.)

“If my family had any faith, it was the Empire, which fell shortly after I was born. We didn’t attend religious services, and… My mother never had anything kind to say about Jedi, but we knew they were a thing and the Force was real. We knew Palpatine has some sort of Force magic, but wasn’t a Jedi.”

“Sith,” Kylo says. “The Jedi were the light side, the Sith, supposedly only two of them at a time, were the dark.”

“Why only two?” Poe asks.

Rey replies, “I think it helped to concentrate power, and it made sure you only had to watch your back against one person. The Apprentice kills his Master, and becomes the Master, then takes a new Apprentice. Only one way for the Sith to move up.”

“My sister used to say that if Vader had done his job, we’d have never ended up with the fall of the Empire. I didn’t realize it was literally his job,” Jon says.

Kylo shrugs a bit, eating a bite of radish. “According to Luke, he did, in the end. Vader threw Palpatine into the power reactor for the Death Star. Just… Too late to save the Empire or himself.”

Jon inclines his head, skeptical of that story. “Yeah, we all learned it that way, but… If you grew up in an Empire household… I mean… Vader wouldn’t do that. He had a million chances to turn on the Emperor and didn’t, so… No. Meanwhile, if Skywalker is going to be _Skywalker,_ he’s pretty much got to tell the story that way, so…”

Poe blinks in shock at that idea. He’s never even thought of doubting the story of Luke Skywalker marching into the hands of Vader and turning him from the dark side by the power of hope and selfless love.

Kylo shrugs a bit. He’s fairly sure Luke’s version of the story is true. But he’s also aware of how slippery true can be in the hands of a Jedi.

And Rey’s just shaking her head, _no_ at Jon.

Jon makes a noncommittal sound, takes another sip of his drink, and says, “And to get back to your question, Rey, my mother, she’ll, occasionally, make snide comments about the only way anyone could have taken down the Empire was with dirty tricks and magic, so, that’s about all the ‘religion’ or philosophy I grew up with.”

“Does she still feel that way?” Rey asks.

“Get enough alcohol into her, and she’ll still admit it. Granted, it’s probably been a decade since she’s had that much to drink.” He shakes his head a bit. “We lived in Imperial City. She was an intimate of the Emperor’s Mistress. Many of her clients and friends were well-placed in the Empire. They played the political game; their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons served in the Imperial military. My father was a Major, on the rise. Lt. Colonel was coming soon, once the Death Star was finished… Our lives, business, everything, was tied to the Empire. When it fell, she was able to recover faster than most, but… It hurt, bad, and it hurt everyone she loved.”

Poe’s just watching this, because he’s never actually seen anyone who was an Imperial. Obviously, they had to exist, but… In the world he was raised in they were all shadowy figures hidden behind white masks or gray uniforms. Not a mild, nice-looking guy sitting across from him, sipping on a cider. Not… people.

“What happened to your father?” Poe asks.

“Stationed on the Second Death Star.” He shrugs a bit. “All hands lost.” He shrugs at that, too. “At least, as best we know, not like we got a visit from the Grays.”

Jon can tell none of them know what that means.

“According to mom, before the first Death Star went up, and there were just too many to handle, if your kin was killed in the service of the Empire, two members of the special services division would come to your home. In head to toe gray dress robes. If anyone saw them… People would get out of their way, and pray they weren’t going to their homes. After the Death Star… They tried, but the backlog was so deep…” Jon shrugs at that. “Anyway, if Dad made it off, he never came home.” He nods to Poe. “How about you? Church of the Force, or something like that growing up?”

“We weren’t formal members, but… You couldn’t grow up in the Rebellion and not at least acknowledge the Force.”

Jon thinks about that for a moment, taking another sip of his drink, and then says, “And… Your Rebel pedigree goes back as far as my Imperial one, right? If the Force is serious about this balance thing… That would… work, right?”

Poe nods. “Mom fought in the battle of the Endor… Second Death Star.”

Jon’s cup is at his lips, but he lowers it to ask, “Survived?” 

“Sort of.” Poe glares at the universe in general. “She lived for another six years after. Any human who was too close to the Death Star when it went got sick, eventually. Even with the shielding on the ships… Too much radiation. They got cancer. Some faster, some slower. If you got the right kind, and noticed it soon enough, and let the med droids cut enough of your body off, you might survive… longer. She didn’t have the right kind, and didn’t notice it soon enough, and by the time we knew that cough was a real problem, not just a cold, there was nothing the droids could do.”

“I’m sorry.”

Poe nods. “Me, too.” He takes a drink. “I mean, about your dad. I don’t have any use for Imperials, but, it still sucks to lose a father.”

Jon half inclines his head. “Thank you, and… I appreciate it.” He takes another bite. “So, no real religion or philosophy for me. Pattern making, dress making, parties, my mom trying to get me married off to any suitable woman who’d have me, since none of them would, she booted me out of the house as soon as the First Order was a going concern in Coruscant. And it’s not like they ever had any real philosophy. Do the job, do it well, follow orders, and that was that.”

“It was just a job to you?” Poe asks. Again, with the exception of Kylo, who he’s thinking wasn’t an ‘average’ member of the First Order, he doesn’t actually know anyone who was, voluntarily, a member.

Jon half shrugs. “Not just. I certainly didn’t mind the idea of bringing law to the galaxy and an end to the Civil Wars, but… Mostly, it was just a job. They needed armor, to spec, under budget, sourced from beginning to end, rolled out for a force of more than twenty million, so I made it.” He sees the derision on Poe’s face. That gets another shrug. “Things may have been different in other areas, but in Tactical Design, there were a lot of people with very specialized skills who couldn’t find work elsewhere because the Military of the New Republic wouldn’t hire ex-Imperials, or their kids. Most local militaries wouldn’t, either, because they didn’t want to risk upsetting the New Republic. So, no legitimate work for people like me. Not to design uniforms, not to test armor, or design ships, or weapons, or… Lots of practical experience, but we were untouchables, something about _conflicts of loyalties,_ and ‘not another Galen Erso,’ so…”

It’s the delivery that gets to Rey. Jon’s just explaining it, like he would if he were going over how to lay out a seam.

“That’s how Kinear joined, too,” Kylo adds. “The New Republic couldn’t convict him of war crimes. He didn’t break any of the rules of war, and was on the other side of the galaxy from the Death Stars, so they couldn’t blame them on him, but even when the wars heated up, they wouldn’t give him a command, so…”

Jon nods. In the kind of work he did, a _lot_ of people joined for that reason. Then he looks up at Poe. “People don’t enjoy starving, especially if they have useful skills other people will pay for.” His voice is still dry, but it’s sharp, too. He smirks a bit, “But I suppose you’d know something about that, being Commander Poe of the Resistance and not the Navy of the New Republic.”

Poe takes a determined bite of his noodles. “Unlikely. I was Captain Dameron of the Navy of the New Republic, personally assigned to Senator Organa’s protection detail. I left, for a cause, to do the right thing, with her.” He takes another bite. “I was never good with just going along to get along.”

“Oh.” Jon looks at Kylo. “Until about a year ago, that’s all I was doing. My private life gave me meaning. My public life was just a way to keep the private life going.” He takes a bite of his biscuit. “I think that’s how most people work… At least where I was. Is that… not how the Resistance… or the New Republic… worked?”

Poe sighs, and Kylo glares. Both of them thinking of the New Republic. Poe’s the one who answers, first. “Just getting along wasn’t… at least in my experience, a thing among the Resistance. You had to seek us out, know someone who knew someone, and… That’s not the sort of thing the complacent join. The fact that we were officially ‘extra-legal’ to the New Republic, and enemies of the First Order meant you didn’t join us unless you were _motivated._ Unless you were willing to die for it.

“The New Republic was different.”

“Stagnant, weak, a snake eating its own tail,” Kylo says, and looks a little surprised when Poe goggles at that. He rolls his eyes a little. “She didn’t talk to me a lot, not about that, but I could feel her frustrations with it when we did. And she did talk to Luke, and I could feel those, too.”

Poe half inclines his head. “Chaotic is the term I’d have used. Every system, sometimes every planet, a few dozen mega corps, and cities, all had representation, and they were all their for their own best good, and none of them really agreed about what they wanted to see happen, and to avoid another Palpatine, anything that was going to effect the whole galaxy needed a 3/4th majority, and… Nothing ever happened.

“We had our military, and any ‘member’ could use it defensively, in theory, but an attack required 3/4ths majority, and even with the First Order eating the rim worlds, we couldn’t get enough of the vote to do it.”

“Why not?” Rey asks. To her this should have been a really obvious move.

“Every member had to provide ships and troops, every member had to pledge resources to keep those ships flying and men fed, and every one of those ships and troops wasn’t going to be on their home world, protecting them from… whatever else was out there.”

“And the First Order wasn’t the only threat in the galaxy,” Kylo adds. “She and Dad talked about it, a little. There were still Imperials with small navies and forces out picking off less well-defended targets, setting up their own kingdoms.”

Poe nods at that. “And pirates, and raiders, and some systems wouldn’t join as a system. Sometimes it would just be a planet or two, and as long as it was ‘defensive’ service, their ships and troops stayed local, if we moved onto an attack, they’d send a decent-sized chunk of their military off, and would have to just hope their neighbors would behave.”  

“And they rarely did,” Kylo adds. “That was part of what the Jedi Knights did, enforced the will of the Old Republic, made sure the different players behaved.”

“Peace through mind control and superior fighting technique? Jon asks.

“If it works…” Kylo lets trail off. “For a while, at least. Somewhat. Until someone turned those skills against them.”

“That’s where the Emperor comes in?” Jon asks.

“In the version of the histories I’ve read,” Rey replies.

“Okay… The Jedi are off being Jedi. They’re keeping the peace, manipulating people’s mind and lopping off heads when need be…” Poe’s just staring at Jon as he’s saying this. That’s _not_ how he learned it. But Kylo’s smirking a bit, apparently agreeing, and Rey’s face is neutral. “And they, like you guys, can sense the Force, and feel all the power around them, and…” he takes another drink of his cider, “put delicately, how the fuck do they let Palpatine rise? Why didn’t they mind control him into submission, or lop his head off?”

And Poe would have to admit, _that’s_ a really good question. That’s the sort of question you can only ask if you weren’t raised to believe the Jedi were a group of near-perfect, all knowing, super beings. That’s the sort of question that’s never been in danger of even threatening to form in Poe’s mind.

Kylo looks to Rey, she’s the theory and philosophy half of the equation. “Okay,” she says, also taking another drink. “I don’t know if this is real or not. It just… feels that way. Maybe if you see Anakin again, you could ask.”

Kylo rolls his eyes at that.

“Who’s Anakin?” Poe asks.

“My grandfather.”

Poe blinks slowly. He knows who Leia’s adopted father was, and his name. And he knows the name her biological father used, in his professional capacity. But, thinking about it, he’s got to assume there was a time he didn’t answer to Darth Vader. Then he says, “He’s… uh… dead, right?”

“Very,” Kylo replies. “And he tends to show up infrequently at best, so…” He strokes the back of Rey’s hand, turning the conversation back to her.

“Wait...” Jon says, “Are we talking about Darth Vader? Is that Anakin?”

Kylo nods.

Jon takes another drink, wishing it were stronger. “Is this… normal, for Maji? Chatting with dead folks?” Kylo and Rey can feel both fear and hope coming from Jon. There’s one dead person he’d dearly like to see again.

“No,” Rey says, shutting Jon’s hopes down. She doesn’t know exactly how this works, but best she knows Force ghosts don’t visit non-Force sensitives, and she doesn’t want Jon wishing for something that isn’t going to happen. “It happens, but it’s not common, and usually only when you really need the help.”

Kylo notices that Poe’s paying way more attention to Rey’s words about that than he would have expected. He’s also got his sabbac face on, and yes, he could find out why he’s got his thoughts shut down right now, but he doesn’t want to.

“And, to get to why the Jedi didn’t take out Palpatine before he got too powerful… My best guess is this,” she touches the Maji pendent on her own neck, the dark and light swirling into each other. “The Jedi existed to extinguish the dark. And they were _good_ at it. But the Force has to balance, it can’t not balance, so between the Sith ‘there can be only two’ practice cutting down the number of potential darklings, and the Jedi cutting down the others, they ended up with _extremely_ concentrated power on the dark side.

“That’s, actually my theory on how we got Snoke, too. In fact… It’s possible that the only reason things ‘balanced’ for as long as they did was Snoke was hiding in the background while the Jedi took out darklings right and left.

“Anyway, they did such a good job of concentrating power on the dark side of things that a few individuals were vastly too strong. But there were so many lightlings, that they each lost power, becoming less and less sensitive.”

Jon thinks about that, and nods a bit. “So, does that mean the dark will always be stronger? I mean… there just are fewer darklings, right? Most people are sort of just bopping along.”

Poe half inclines his head. “By my, non-Force sensitive, view of things, darklings and lightlings are both fairly rare. We’ve got a few lightsiders, and counting him,” he nods to Ren, “five darklings. Everyone else is sort of in the middle.”

“And part of what I’m doing is trying to help keep the middle ones in the middle, and let the lightlings and darklings find an easier time balancing.” She strokes Kylo’s hand. “He’s never going to be light, but he doesn’t have to be as dark as he was. I’m never going to be dark, but I don’t have to try to be a Jedi paragon of virtuous stillness and calm.”

“And you’re somewhere in the middle?” Jon asks Poe.

Poe shakes his head. “Last year I’d have said yes, but… Apparently, Dark isn’t so much about evil and hurting people, as it is changing things, tearing them down, passion, attachment, impatience, rashness, so… Uh… I’m not Force sensitive, but I’m definitely dark.”

“And going along to get along… That’d be… Light?” Jon asks Rey.

“From what I can tell, yes. You were talking about just getting along. That’s the only thing I did for the entire time I was on Jakku. Granted, that’s the only thing most people could do there. But, unlike those two, I notice I have a really easy time getting into patterns, and a much harder time getting out of them. The light is still, and deep, steady. So light and dark, it’s more about active versus calm. Construction versus destruction. Good and evil are one matrix, and that’s… about what you do. Dark and Light is about how you do it.”

Jon thinks about that for a moment, chewing his noodles, and then says, “But you want me to make armor for you? Isn’t that… really _active?_ ”

Rey grins. “It really is, and we’re going to get to that soon, I hope. I’m light gray, and he’s dark gray, and not having anyone bordering on white or black is where we’re hoping to get.”

“Snoke was probably as close to black as anyone’s gotten, and I think we’re all better off if that doesn’t happen again,” Kylo says. “Hell, given how much building up and construction he did, Palpatine was somewhere likely on the mid-gray scale. He was also evil and power-mad. Mix those together and… well… Death Stars.”

“Uh huh…” Jon says, still thinking. Then he puts his fork down. “And you think,” he gestures to the four of them, “we’re the… heart… of The Order of the Maji.”

“Speaking of which, were you intending to mention that to me?” Poe adds.

“What’s to mention? This is real. You’re part of it. You feel it,” Kylo says.

Poe shoves Kylo’s shoulder. “Talking, Kylo. You need to _talk_ to people, not just assume and order them around.” Poe smirks brilliantly at Jon. “See, that’s not a Dark thing. I know I’m Dark, but I don’t pull that sort of shit on people, at least, not any more. That’s an entitled asshole thing, which, from what I can tell, he comes by honestly. His mom could be the _Queen_ of the entitled assholes, and I’ve got stories about his Dad that would make you blush, but we’re going to break him of it.”

Jon bites his lip, to stifle his giggles. “Remind me to tell you about the throne someday.”

“Throne?” Poe asks.

Kylo sighs through gritted teeth, glaring at both of them while Rey smirks happily. “Off topic.”

 

 

“Fine,” Poe replies. “So this is something you’re… putting into play, so… Get talking, what and how and where, and… I can be a damn good second-in-command if someone gives me at least the start of a plan, but I don’t exactly like coming up with it from scratch, so… Talk. If we’re The Order of the Maji, what does the Order of the Maji _do?_ ”

“My thoughts, exactly,” Jon adds, looking at his empty cup. “Do you have anything real to drink here?”

Poe stands up and gets the bottle of brandy. “Another good point.” He pours both of them a shot, holds the bottle to Kylo and Rey, who both decline, and then offers a toast to the other three. “To the future of whatever the hell the Order of the Maji is.”

That gets some smirking, and clinking glasses.

Jon takes a sip. Then he says, “Okay, so you and I,” he gestures to Kylo, “talk about this politics thing, and what we’re doing, but… It hasn’t escaped my notice that you don’t actually have any goals or policy. Anything beyond how we get people you’ve kicked down the road to whatever eventual elections we have.”

“What do we have?” Poe asks.

Kylo sighs. “We’re volunteer. That’s bedrock. People come to us. We don’t conquer them, we don’t steal them, we don’t… anything. They join us.”

“Like your speech,” Rey says, “anyone who can get to you can find the future they want.”

“That’s a policy, right?” Kylo says. “People are the most valuable thing in the galaxy. Everything else is meaningless if you don’t have people. So… We take people. They give me five years service. I give them a shot to make their lives better. If other systems want to hang onto their people, they’ve got to give them a better deal than I offer them.”

“How does that tie into our balance, Rey?” Poe asks.

Rey doesn’t shrug, but she does have to think about it for a second. “It’s easier to balance if you’re doing something you like.”

Kylo nods. “A _lot._ ”

“Yeah, well, The Order isn’t exactly happy, happy joy land when it comes to that,” Jon says. “A lot of our new recruits are doing shit jobs and going through significantly less-than-pleasant training.”

“For a few years at most,” Kylo adds. “Just the promise of better will get people through hard things.”

“That’s how I got through basic,” Poe says. He shakes his head. “I don’t think any military training program in the galaxy is _fun._ ”

Jon sips his drink, eyes Poe, and says, “Yeah, well, there’s a difference between ‘not fun’ and ‘having to occasionally castrate one of your trainers with a laser sword in front of all the others to keep them in line.’”

Poe turns his gaze and stares at Kylo, eyes the size of plates. “Uh…”

“Retention levels are a lot better now,” Kylo says, completely deadpan.

Poe shudders.

“We need to go over the new curriculum soon,” Jon adds.

Kylo sighs, and then says, “I know. I can give them the shot at a better life, and a lot of them are using me as a way to get from one place to another. Hopefully, if I can get the training figured out, I can get them attached enough to the Order to stick around long enough to become citizens.”

“There’s another bedrock. They volunteer, and you treat them like _people._ Like they’re valuable to you,” Rey adds. 

Kylo nods, and then pulls a data pad to them, setting it on the table, and starts to type, one-handed while eating.

“Notes?” Poe asks.

“If you had a third of what I’m supposed to keep track of in your head, you’d need notes, too.”

Poe smirks. “There’s something to be said for _not_ being a commander.”

He’s looking at what Kylo’s jotting down, and suddenly he knows why he’s here, and what his purpose is. “Your year end speech, you talked about people coming to you, and a better life, and peace… What are you going to do about places that don’t want you sucking people out of them?”

Kylo looks up from the pad to Poe, and for the first time really _sees_ Poe, sees who Poe is and what he’s good at, and what he’s been doing for the Maji, what he did for the Resistance. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then says, “Oh.”

Poe nods. “I’m probably the current foremost expert in setting up underground organizations designed specifically to get people into places they aren’t supposed to be and out of places they aren’t supposed to leave.”

“Chewie,” Rey says.

Poe’s grinning. “If…”

“Who’s Chewie?” Jon asks.

Kylo sighs at that, too. “What have I told you about my Dad?”

Well, there’s the bit Jon really remembers, that Kylo killed him, beyond that… “Not much. Obviously, at some point he had a relationship with Leia Organa. You said your name used to be Solo, so… Solo… Oh… Han Solo… Right. I… Uh… Saw pictures of him on some of the holovids.” Jon rolls his eyes. “We were all happy and content New Republicans, but I did my best to _not_ pay attention to anything in any of our history classes. Oh, look at all the pictures of people grinning and celebrating the day your dad died. Look at them put medals on each other. Read a few more pages about how everyone in an Empire Uniform was utter evil. Look at how stupid and evil they were, killed by overgrown rodents with rocks and sticks…” Jon shudders a bit, and then refocuses on the present. “I failed a lot of history classes. That’s part of why I got to quit school and went to work with my Mom fulltime at fourteen. Fail too many of those classes, and people would start to talk.”

Kylo reaches across the table and gives his hand a little squeeze.

“You remember the Wookie usually somewhere in the picture behind Han?” Poe asks.

Jon’s thinking back, trying to remember, and then he nods. “Yeah.”

“That’s Chewie,” Kylo replies. “My mom was born in the Rebellion. It literally started the day she was born. Obi Wan gave her to Bail Organa to keep her hidden and safe from Vader and the Emperor. My dad was anti-Empire from the other side. He, like a lot of our recruits, joined the Empire to get out of a bad situation, then he was kicked out of the Academy because orders and rule following was never his thing. He found Chewie, or Chewie saved his ass, depending on who’s telling the story. He bet well and won the _Falcon_ off my uncle, and the two of them went off to break the law in any and every system they could get to, and every law the Empire ever tried to enforce. They were smugglers. Chewie still is.”

Poe wiggles his hand meaning, sort of. “He and Finn bring us the things we need here. They finance it by moving some hot stuff, too.”

“You don’t finance it?” Jon asks Kylo.

He looks to Rey. “My personal funds are invested here, but someone would prefer not having a horde of Order engineers here getting everything set and ready to go.”

“Doing it, ourselves, matters,” Rey says, out loud, _Can we talk about that later?_ flows from her mind to Kylo’s too.

Kylo’s eyebrow raises. _What’s happened?_

_Later._

_Interesting._

“Anyway,” Rey adds. “Yes, Kylo’s personal funds are part of the mix, but I haven’t felt right about taking Order funds.”

Jon glances to Kylo, and then goes to the living area window, to look out at the rest of the settlement. The suns are down, but he can see the lights coming from the windows of the other cottages. “Okay, this isn’t lavish, but I know how much they pay me, so…”

“We may have won a million or so cheating at gambling, too,” Rey adds.

“And are planning to do a whole lot more of that,” Poe adds.

Jon turns slowly to Kylo, licks his lips, blinks, and then says, “ _That’s_ what you do on vacation?”

Kylo smirks a bit. Then he nods, and deciding to just go with it, says, “Lots of sex, too. It’s fun.”

Kylo’s not sure which one of the men laughs harder, but both Jon and Poe appear to really appreciate that line. Rey’s just staring at him. _What? It was funny._

She rolls her eyes at that. When the men have calmed down and can listen again, she says, “Chewie was Han’s partner. He’s currently the owner of the _Falcon_. He and Finn are keeping up the smuggling business, and if there’s anyone in the galaxy who can move hot cargo around, it’d be them.”

Jon nods at that. “Okay. That’s great, but… Your sense of scale is off. I mean, sure, if you can get him to do this, great, set it up, but… To do this on any level where it’ll matter, you’re going to need more than three guys.”

Poe slumps a bit at that. “That was the same problem I was having before. I can set these things up. I can set them up all day, every day, and every night, too. But I need people I can trust and… We just… ran out of people.”

“I can get you people,” Kylo says. “We’re actually… Right now it’s not a problem, yet, because most of them are still in training, but we’re going to get to the point where I’ve got too many ground troops and not enough ground, so if you can train them, I can get you people. We can set up… Businesses or something that needs to have goods coming in and out, all over planets that don’t want the Order around, and we can use that as cover to get people out.”

“And if I get them trained in how to fly under the scanners, make connections, and find people, and get them out, then they go to you, do their five years, become citizens, and…” Poe’s eyes are lighting up. This is the Resistance, back when it was young and winning battles, and shiny, and everyone was hopeful again. _This_ is one of the things he’s _good_ at.

“Go on to do or be whatever they want,” Kylo says. “That’s what the Order is. The promise that your present and past don’t have to dominate your future.”

“And how does the Maji work into that? Do we have to become Maji? Do you want… Churches? All over the _Supremacy?_ ” Jon asks.

Rey’s turn to sigh. “First off, I do know that no one will have to become Maji. It won’t work if you join because someone is making you. As for the rest… Right now… I don’t know. I don’t think it’s organized enough to start really spreading it around. We’re still figuring it out.”

Poe shakes his head. “You make it more complicated than it has to be. Don’t be an ass. Boom! Maji philosophy and religion in five words or less.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Rey says.

“Not really. Yeah, you’ve got all the bits about balance and light and dark, but you also talk about how _everyone_ is part of it, and that means even people who don’t know about it are, and when you boil that down, _don’t be an ass_ covers the particulars.” 

“You can avoid being an ass and still not be in the balance,” Rey says.

Poe’s shaking his head. “I don’t think so. You can be polite and not be in balance. Not being an ass requires you to understand the people around you, even the ones you don’t agree with, have some level of basic personhood, and are just trying to get to some version of the good life. And if you understand that, you’re already half way to balanced.”

Jon’s looking very pleased by that. “So, that’s it, we’re… taking over the galaxy, one and hopefully more, people at a time by… recognizing their basic personhood, and… Maybe throwing in some more sophisticated philosophy, but, at the most basic level, we’re… just being good guys?”

The four of them all look at each other. It’s so blindingly easy and simple and… _right._

Rey nods. “Join the Order of the Maji, we’ll recognize your basic dignity and give you the tools to do whatever you want with it.”

 

 

* * *

The rest of dinner flows fairly easily from there.

“Dessert?” Rey asks as they’re wrapping up.

“You have dessert?” Jon asks. Neither Rey nor Kylo, or Poe for that matter, look like they eat a lot of dessert. Or they spend way more time at the gym than Jon thinks they do. Granted, given all the nothing out there, maybe they spend a lot more time running around and building things than he thinks they do.

He, on the other hand, is fairly sure he’s got at least an extra hour at the gym to make up for tonight.

He’s feeling comfortably well-fed, and fairly content with the world in general right now. Be one of the top men in an organization designed to basically make the galaxy a better place for as many people as want to join feels really good.

Plus, he’s not minding the eye candy here, at all. And, if they’re going to give him literal candy on top of that…  Well, he’s always had a sweet tooth, and for more than just sugar.

He’s not exactly interested in Poe, not as anything he might act on. First of all, nine out of ten men he meets aren’t interested in other men. That’s one of the few things he prefers about making friends with women, vastly more of them like men than men do. So, odds are awfully good that Poe’s just not for him. Plus, if the two of them are going to be able to work together, and it sounds like that’s going to happen at least sometimes, it’d be better off to not get stupid and horny about him.

But he’s awfully pretty to look at. Especially sitting back, eyes lit up, getting ready to talk about Maji desserts, looking like he’s going to really enjoy this story.

Jon’s always liked his men dark and lean, and Poe’s got that in spades. And, he’s taller than Poe, taller than most human men, at least not when Kylo’s looming nearby, and, yeah, well, he does, generally speaking, like being able to have his partner cuddle on in, soft and close, body tucked in against him.

And, yes, if he were going to design a personality for himself, devil may care, with a bit of depth behind the eyes, is pretty much where he’d go, but…

Still, working. Professionalism… Yep. Poe’s probably good wank fodder, but nothing more than that.

Poe’s eyeing the plate Rey’s removing from the cooler, getting into the story of Maji desserts. “Master Dark over there taught a few of the kids how to make cookies, and we’ve been swimming in sweets ever since.”

Rey shows them off, “Cookies. They’re some sort of nut and jam tart, I think,” before putting them in the cooker to warm a bit.

“You taught kids how to make cookies?” Jon says to Kylo.

Kylo shrugs a bit. “Not that kind.” He had a few of them this morning with breakfast, and they’re not only more complicated than anything he ever learned how to make, but they’re better, too. Ostrae is learning _fast_. “And just two of them, but, yes. And really we were learning how to cope with being dark.”

Jon runs his fingers through his hair. He absolutely understands every word Kylo just said. He can define all of them. But making cookies to learn how to cope with being dark means literally _nothing_ to him. “Okay, concrete level, what do you guys _do_ here?”

Poe smiles at that. “Okay, concrete level. I go fly around, find kids. Some of them are Force sensitive, some aren’t. Right now we’ve got just about as many of them as we can take, but I’m also coming up empty on orphans in need of a good place to land, so I guess that’s the Force at work. When I’m not finding kids, I find stuff we need here. My last run, I brought in piles of hay for the Faviers and a roulette wheel. I teach the kids some basic mechanics. I teach them how to play different card games and games of chance. Part of that is learning how to improve our cheating at gambling finance operation, part of it is teaching them strategic thinking, part of it is learning basic math and how to calculate the odds. BB-8, my droid, and I show them basic robotics. I’ve been known to putter around in the microfarms, or help Rose with the electronics if she needs extra hands. Sometimes I just entertain the kids. One of these days, I’ll get Jacen up, and we’ll see how well he’s learned how to fly.”

“Jack of all trades?” Poe asks.

“That’s probably Rose. But I do a bit of everything, too.”

“I met Rose right before the party, right?” Jon says.

Rey nods.

“And she and her husband aren’t here…” he leads.

“Finn’d rather spit on me than sit at a table with me,” Kylo says.

Poe shoots him a _he’s got a good reason for it_ look, and then adds, “You cut his back in half and just about killed him, _and_ he’s a First Order defector, so… Anyway, those two have _issues_ that are still being worked on,” Poe says.

“Ah,” Jon says. Then he looks from Poe to Kylo. “But you two, don’t.”

They both sort of shrug.

“In a different galaxy he likely would have been the kid I’d have been assigned to protect. Or at least my boss’s son, so…”

“I’m _not_ that much younger than you are.”

“The difference between seventeen and twelve is massive, and if you don’t believe that, Jacen’ll tell you all about it after a long day of the kids following him around. You would have been the kid I’d have been vastly too old and mature to have anything to do with, and you would have followed me around like a puppy. And given what a snot Mon Mothma could be sometimes, you likely would have been my fulltime job.”

Kylo smirks. “And I’d have made you hate every minute of it.”

Poe rolls his eyes. “I love his mom. She was… amazing. And…” he glances to Kylo, “I know you two didn’t have it easy, but… She wasn’t my mom, she was my General, and… She gave me a place, and a mission, and a hope, and forgave me when I was being an utter shit, which happened more often than it should have, and… Anyway. I can’t just spit on him. Not after that. Meanwhile, he’s shacked up with my other best friend, and again, I can’t just… hate him. So, two of my favorite ladies love this man, which means, I at least need to try, and apparently, if you hit him just right, you can put a tiny crack in all that black and see the a person hiding in there,” more eye rolling from Kylo, though he’s noticing that Jon appears to have a very similar opinion, and Rey’s not exactly telling Poe he’s wrong, so… “with a kind of wicked sense of humor, and some interesting skills, and… So, yeah, we’ve got issues, too, but they’re not nearly as big.”

Kylo just inclines his head in agreement. That pretty much wraps it up.

“As for what they do, Rose is the Jack of all Trades. You name it, she can do it. Finn and Chewie are smuggling and bringing in supplies. Most of what you see around here came in on the _Falcon._ Finn also teaches some combat, mostly baton right now,” Rey says. “I teach… Everything but the standard lessons. Threepio used to be doing that, and now we’ve got MX-R8. He’s new, but seems to be settling in, and the kids like him, so that’s good.”

“And by… everything… you mean the Force stuff?”

“The Force stuff, what balancing means, meditation, lead conversations about things like philosophy and theology, some physical conditioning, some stretching and strength building, balancing bodies and minds, stuff like that.”

“Floating stuff?” Jon asks.

“Some. Not all of the kids are Force sensitive, so the lessons have to be useful for everyone. But, yes, I’ll break them into smaller groups and do Force stuff, too. Though, as time goes by, since he’s the one who had formal lessons, he might be the better choice for teaching more advanced Force stuff.”

“You didn’t have lessons?” Poe asks.

“In the five minutes I was with Luke? No. I pulled his lessons out of his head, and got the quick version.”

Kylo snorts a quick laugh at that. “Vastly preferable to actually doing the work.”

“And what do you do?” Jon asks Kylo.

“Apparently, eventually, I’ll be doing ‘Force stuff.’ Right now I teach saber and work with the two little Darklings about how to manage being Dark.”

“By making cookies?” Jon asks, not even close to seeing how that might work.

“The little one is seven. And… It’s easier to not be constantly on fire if there’s something you like doing. So… She didn’t know what she liked to do, but she did like eating cookies, so we made some to see if she likes making them, and…”

“And then all the other kids wanted to learn, because, shockingly enough, cookies and kids get on pretty well, and Ostrae’s, the little Darkling, tried every variety we’ve got a recipe and ingredients for, and Finn’s bringing an oven for their cottage, and I know he and Chewie have a run to a farming planet soon, so we can get more fruit. She’s really liking cooking, and apparently when she’s cooking, she’s not hitting or biting her older siblings, so we’re keeping her in stuff to cook, and she’s keeping us in cookies,” Rey says, getting the cookies out of the cooker, and resting them on the table.

Jon grabs one, and they are _good._ Some sort of buttery short crust with a sweet, gooey, tart center. He’s had considerably worse baked goods at formal events catered for tens of thousands of credits.

“Hitting or biting?” Jon asks, once he’s done chewing.

Kylo shrugs. “You remember the gossip about me… Before? Breaking things with my lightsaber? Throwing officers around like ragdolls?”

Jon winces a little, not exactly pleased to mention this, but there was a reason he was about to wet his pants the first time he got a summons from Supreme Leader Ren. “Yeah. I mean… You had to feel how scared I was the first time you called me in to a meeting.”

Kylo nods, remembering. “It’s really easy, if you’ve got a lot of dark, to spiral into self-and-others-destructive behavior. Which is great if something old and corrupt needs to be torn down, and less-than-ideal when you’re aiming it at yourself and the people around you.”

“And your little darkling…” Jon leads.

“Is the youngest of three, the only one who isn’t Force sensitive, is angry at the universe in general and her siblings in specific because her siblings are basically wizards and she’s not.”

Jon thinks about that. “Yeah. I can see that sucking. I spent a lot of time pissed at my sisters for being girls…”

“For being girls?” Poe asks.

“Men don’t design dresses on Coruscant. They don’t run fancy fashion houses and make lots of money by dressing people. My sisters and mom made a lot of money and scored a lot fashion status off of pretending my work belonged to one of my sisters.” Jon sees how Poe takes that. “Don’t get me wrong. They’re very good, too. It’s not like my work was stellar and theirs is just okay. We’re all exceptional dress makers. But… They got the credit, and I didn’t, and that’s beyond annoying.”

Kylo nods. “Yeah. Well, add on a naturally sad and destructive personality on top of that, and a bit too much fondness for pain, and a short temper… It’s not great. So, I spend time with her and Critt, working on ways to not be angry and sad and tense all the time. Try to get all of us closer to gray.”

Jon’s looking at Kylo. “Is it helping?”

“I think so.” He shrugs a bit. “For me at least. I find working with them centering, and I think it’s good for Critt, and I hope it’s good for Ostrae. I’ll probably chat with them again tomorrow.”

Poe leans back, and takes another sip of his drink, “So, Grand Marshall, what do you do?”

Jon thinks about that for a moment, and then says, “When you were with Senator Organa’s…” he pauses, makes sure he’s right about that, and Poe nods, “security detail, did you go with her to a lot of fancy gatherings where people met and mingled and talked and made deals and plans?”

“New one every day.”

“Okay, so, what I do, right now, is make sure the space for the gathering is right, and then I put the right people in it, and if there’s a way for the Order to make money off of it, I try to figure that out. I make sure all the people at the gathering are taken care of, are kept in a good mood and whatever it is they need to work out whatever it is they intend to work out, is there for them. I make sure they’ve got places to stay, and the right people to meet, and that if those two are part of it, they’re in the right place at the right time and properly shiny while they’re doing it.”

Poe nods.

“And I do that for the entire Order. I am, or will be, the Grand Marshal of the Order Diplomatic Corps. And my job is to make sure that everyone who comes to work with us can get whatever it is worked out, and do so in ease and comfort.”

Poe whistles. “That’s a job, all right. That’s what you’ve got Threepio off doing?”

“Yes, and he’s turning out to be _very_ good at it. There are too many details for any human to do the job, and right now, I’m _low_ on staff, so… He’s a lifesaver. Literally, apparently the flowers I had brought in were toxic to twelve of the guests, and he’s the one who brought it to my attention. Otherwise that first party would have been very exciting in a way none of us wanted it to be.”

Poe shudders at that idea. “Yeah, nothing like a pile of corpses to say, ‘We’re great at this hospitality thing.’”

Jon nods. “Exactly!”

There’s a moment, where Jon’s about to talk a bit more about the Order’s idea of neutral meeting space and whatnot, but… something… happens, and every hair on his body raises in electric fear.

The other three with him all shudder a bit at it, too.

And just as he’s about to say, “What the fuck was that,” Poe says, “Cassie’s right, this one’s gonna be bad. I need to get moving, fast, and you too, if you want to get off the ground before the storm hits?”

“Storm?” Jon asks.

“Yeah. Welcome to Lirium, where the winter bites back. On most planets, you’ve got to be really sensitive to feel the pressure change that comes with an oncoming storm. And Cassie, one of the lightlings, is _really_ sensitive, she can feel them days out, but anyway…” Poe’s getting up. “The blizzard will probably hit in the next ten minutes, so…”

“Uh… I didn’t fly. No ship to get out.”

Poe glances to Kylo. Then he shakes his head. “So you can teleport other people?”

“Apparently,” Kylo replies.

Poe glances back to Jon. “You’re braver than I am. Just the idea of it makes my skin crawl.”

Jon offers him a lopsided smile. “Yeah, well, he didn’t exactly ask the first time, and it’s not the most fun sensation ever, but it is fast, and I’m not a pilot, so…”

“Makes sense.” Poe gives Rey a little kiss on the cheek, ruffles Kylo’s hair, and he looks annoyed at that, and then leans his knee on the bench, and looks down at Jon with a grin, and offers Jon his hand. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you Grand Marshal Jon.”

 

 

Jon smiles up at him, and says, “Back at you, Poe of the Maji.”

And this time, Poe holds his hand a breath or two longer than strictly necessary. “Okay, gotta run. I’ve got a ropeline between the settlement and my ship, but I really don’t want to test it.”

The other three nod at him. Poe bundles up, and heads off.

Jon stretches. “Probably time for me to go home, too.”

Kylo nods at that. “I’ll take you. You’re off tomorrow and the next day, too. Get caught back up on your rest, because as soon as we’re up and running…”

“I know. Threepio’s already told me we’re getting interest in the services we offer, and if we’re going to do this, we need to be sharp.”

“Good,” Rey says.

Jon, like Poe kisses Rey’s cheek, but the glare Kylo aims at him stays his hand, though the smirk on his face certainly indicates there may be a time he attempts to ruffle his hair. Kylo sighs, loudly and put upon at that, and then lays a hand on his shoulder, waits for Jon to nod at him, before pulling him back to his rooms on the _Supremacy._

Jon shudders a bit when they’re in his room. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that.”

“You can get used to all sorts of things,” Kylo says.

“I’d imagine so.”

“So, good dinner?”

“Yeah, I think it was. We’ll talk more later.”

Kylo nods, and ports back home.

 

 

* * *

 _How’d it go?_ BB-8 chirps at Poe when he gets into his ship.

“Not bad. I met the infamous Jon.”

More beeping is met with. “I mean, yeah, he’s nice. But, literally the first thing I heard when I walked in was about his _girlfriend_ so…”

More beeping.

“I know. I do. But between the girlfriend comment, and the marriage band he’s wearing, I’m thinking this one is _beyond_ off limits.”

_You really can pick ‘em, can’t you?_

“I’m not picking anything, okay? He’s a nice looking man, who’s got a decent sense of humor, very pretty blue eyes, and there’s no possible way he’s ever going to look twice at me, okay? I’ve got it. He is a no-picking zone.”

Apparently, BB-8 can beep sarcastically.

“Look, it’s not my fault Finn went off and fell in love with Rose. She wasn’t even on his horizon when I got interested in him. This one, I can see the glowing stay away signs, and I’m staying away, okay?”

Sincere beeping.

“Yeah. I know. I do.”

More beeping.

“One day. Until then, it’s you and me, buddy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, I’m fucking evil. Have I mentioned that before? I know I mentioned that before. That said, yes, this is the launch of the good ship Joe, it’s just… going to take a while to get to full steam. 
> 
> (Sound of Keryl cackling with glee. Oh yeah, I've written some scenes absolutely *dripping* sexual tension for a *SLOW* fucking burn. HEHEHEHEHE!)
> 
> Now, I can't remember if I specifically mentioned Jon's wedding band before. It's in every image where you can see his bare left hand. As for Jon’s friend, I have mentioned her before, and she is, in fact, his friend. They’ve slept together, at least a few times, but really, they’re just buddies. (More on that backstory at some point, and I'm thinking we need to get Rey a friend from inside the Order at some point, but that's likely a *ways* out.)
> 
> In the meantime, welcome to chapter two, I hope you've liked it. More fun next week!


	3. Changes

1/3/2  21:40

 

Rey’s tidying up what’s left of dinner when Kylo gets back from taking Jon home.

For a moment, he just re-acclimates himself. Poe, and apparently, Cassie weren’t kidding about the storm. It’s hit full force now, and even in the house, he can feel the power of the wind. Everything around them is just, slightly, shaking. He can hear it, too, certainly. It’s howling around them. He steps over to the window, and cups his hands around his face, blocking the light of the room reflecting off the transteel, and looks out. When they left, he knew he could see the lights of the rest of Lirium. They’re gone, now. Just howling, shifting, black.

Kylo shrugs a bit. As long as no one goes out in it, everyone should be fine. Cold, but fine. Then he heads over to Rey, taking up the dishes she washes, pulling a towel to hand, and drying them.

“Thanks,” she says.

He nods. “If we got a rack over the sink, we could just keep them there, and they’d dry off, drip into the sink, and we wouldn’t need to dry them.”

“You guys have something like that at Luke’s?”

“Yeah. None of us, even Luke, loved chores that we didn’t have to do.” He steps across the kitchen, to the shelf where the dishes live, and puts the dry one back. She can feel he’s thinking about today, and talking with Jon, especially about who’s bankrolling this place. “Of course, we could also just get a sonic for the dishes. Pop them in that, run it, and not have to worry about cleaning them at all.”

She shrugs a bit. Aware of the fact that sonics aren’t just for cleaning people. “I suppose we could. Do you have any idea what they cost?”

“Nope. Can’t be too much. Jon’s got one in his apartment.”

She nods, and hands him another clean and wet plate. “How much do you get paid?”

He shrugs. “I honestly don’t know. Probably around fifty thousand credits a year, but…”

“Is that a lot?”

Kylo shrugs again. “I don’t know the answer to that, either. It’s more than the thousand a month we pay the newest recruits who are still in testing and training. It’s probably, I hope, less than we pay top-rate navigators.”

“You hope?”

“The report I’m supposed to read next is about how far below our recruiting goals we are on navigators. I’ve been told good ones can go for more than a million credits a year, so… Part of why that report’s on my desk is they want my approval to start paying navigators a hell of a lot more, and to fast track citizenship for any of them who agree to sign up.”

“Ah…”

“Yeah.” He shrugs, and then floats the plate over to the shelf. “All part of offering a better deal, I guess.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

They stand there, quietly washing and drying dishes for a few moments. Then he says, “There was something you wanted to talk to me about…”

She nods. And points to the faucet, which is on, with a modest flow coming out. “That’s it. The tap’s fully open, and that’s as much will come out.”

Kylo narrows his eyes a bit. He generally doesn’t pay  _that_ much attention to the sink. He turns the handle, water comes out, but… This is looking awfully sluggish. “There should be a lot more of it than that, right?”

She nods. “The pipes are freezing.”

“Again.”

“Again. And the lake’s frozen down to the point where the ice is going to block the intake soon.”

He nods at that, too. “Finn and Poe buried it deeper last month, right?”

“Yes, they did. And the ice has caught up to them, and unless this is it,” she gestures to the storm raging around them, then her voice goes sarcastic, “and it magically warms up in the next day or so, it’s going to overtake our water intake in the next few days.”

He rubs his lips together. “Ice over the intake means no running water.”

“Yeah.”

He looks at the limp trickle of water, and Rey, and back to the water. “I rather like running water.”

“Yeah. Me, too. My sense is there’s no one in the settlement who prefers lugging blocks of snow and ice inside their cottages to thaw it out and use it like that.” She feels like that’s necessary, because, of course,  _they_ can bug out, live in his rooms in the  _Supremacy_  and enjoy all the running water they like. Everyone else though…

“I can’t imagine that’s anyone’s idea of fun.” He echoes her point.

Rey can feel he’s making conversation to let her work up to saying it out loud.

She sighs, bites her lip, and then does it. “I need help. We need help. Rose thinks that if we had a precision drill, and a team who knows how to do it—“

“Done.”

She doesn’t blink. It’s not like him agreeing to this is anything of a surprise. The warm, pleased,  _happy_  feel coming off of him at the fact that he can really  _do_ something for the settlement is also not a surprise, other than it’s more intense than she was expecting.

The fact that he blinks out of their home, and is gone for a quarter hour before popping back up and saying– “Got it. C8 tells me that I’ll have an engineer in my office first thing in the morning. I’ll bring him… her… whoever over and they should have it set and ready to go day after that. C8 asked if we wanted an entire water processing plant, or just the pipes… but I didn’t know, and the engineer will be able to give us plans and what’ll be necessary to set them in place.”– is something of a surprise, though, really it shouldn’t be. He’s always been eager to help here, and she’s finally giving him something concrete he can do. Or at least get done.

Rey nods, slowly. Feeling somewhat numb. Their… hiding place… not so hidden. Maybe…

“How are you going to bring him here?”

“I was just going to,” and he ports to the far side of the room.

Rey nods a bit, and then says, “Do you want people to know you can do that? Jon’s probably safe, but…”

Kylo grits his teeth. That’s a good point. There’s probably a  _lot_  of advantage that comes from people not knowing he can do that. “Fly, I guess. Not like I’m low on ships.”

“Fly yourself, right?” Because if someone else flies then someone else will know where they are.

He nods. “Yes… Fly the team that does whatever it is, too.”

She nods a bit at that. “In between all of the reports, and meetings, and the rest of it…”

He rolls his eyes a bit. “Yeah.” Maybe there’s a setting on his reports that’ll make them read themselves to him. He can fly and listen. Might be worth looking into.

“The only thing Poe’s got set for tomorrow is working with the kids.”

Kylo purses his lips. Or maybe he could… ask… for help. Because, after all, he’s not the only pilot he knows… “So… take Poe with me tomorrow…”

“He probably likes running water, too, though.”

“Probably. But since his comes from his ship and is a side product of his fuel processing, he’s not quite as dependent on the lake as the rest of us.”

“True. But… Maybe he’s a bit less busy, but still willing to fly.”

Kylo inclines his head. “And he obviously knows the coordinates for Lirium.” He smirks a bit, “and how to get off the  _Supremacy._ ”

Rey smirks at that some, too. “So, you’ll ask him, in the morning?”

“Sure. And if he’s busy or whatever, I’ll fly the engineer myself.”

“Okay.” She hands him the last dish. As he’s drying it, he says, “You know… I could get you your own ship.”

“I know.”

He nods at that, too. “Just like… engineers, or droids, or… whatever… Just say the word.”

“I know.”

He looks around their small cottage, and then wraps his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder. He nuzzles close, inhaling the scent of her skin and hair, laying a kiss on her neck. “I didn’t tell you that story, did I?”

“Mmm?”

“The  _I know_  story.”

She shakes her head a bit. He was going to tell her, but it’d slipped both of their minds. Apparently, until now. He steps back, takes her hands, and in a moment, they’re in the comfy chair, snuggled together under the blankets.

“So, the war’s on, and like usual, Mom and Dad are running from the Empire, because, that’s just an average day for them. They’ve got a lot of heat on them, the  _Falcon_ is, again, falling apart, and they’re low on fuel, or something like that. Pretty much anything that could have gone wrong, did. Which is also, at least from how they tell the stories, also a pretty average day for them.

“They’re in the middle of nowhere. A billion klicks from the nearest Rebel base. So, Dad gets the bright idea to take a chance on his old buddy, Lando, and sends the  _Falcon_ limping to Cloud City.”

“Where things are going to continue to go wrong?” Rey asks.

“Where things are going to continue to go wrong. If anyone was going to ever write the story of Han Solo’s life, ‘I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This, and I’m Right,’ would likely be a good title for it.”

She chuckles a bit at that. “What happens in Cloud City?”

“Vader wants to lure Luke into a trap. Jabba’s got a huge price of my father’s head. Cloud City is Lando’s first attempt at ruling something, and… He actually was a pretty good ruler. Even then. So, the Empire showed up, wanted my parents and Chewie, they were going to sell Dad to Jabba, and grab Luke when he shows up to save them. Vader made it clear to Lando that this was either going to go easy or hard, and Lando decided his ‘Old Friend’ wasn’t worth the number of people who’d die if he went the hard way.”

“Not so good for your dad and mom.”

“But very good for the tens of thousands of people who lived in Cloud City. As soon as he got the Empire immediately off his back, Lando cleaned his people out, double-crossed Vader, and then piloted Falcon into the second Death Star, blew the fucker up, and personally crippled the Empire. Did more to win the damn thing than any other person.”

“Which is part of why you’re taking pages from his book, and not your Mom’s.”

He smiles. “That, and I look better in a cape than braids.”

She laughs at that. “Okay. So, your parents are visiting Lando. So’s Vader?”

“Yes, he showed up personally, because apparently my family really enjoys intense meet-the-future-in-laws types of gatherings. Granted, he apparently never figured out Leia was his daughter, so…”

“How?”

“I don’t know, and when I asked he didn’t have a good answer. For whatever reason, he could feel Luke a billion klicks out, but Mom flew under the scanners. Apparently, being blind to the reality of your offspring is another Skywalker family trait.”

She strokes his hair. “I like this.”

He smiles a little, and kisses her. “Me telling stories?”

“You feeling comfortable telling them. Joking about them. I can feel some of the sarcasm is defensive, but some of it’s just funny.”

He thinks about it, watching her, wondering if she’ll tell him some of her stories, but she shakes her head, so he keeps going. “Anyway, Uncle Lando hands my Dad over, and for whatever reason, Vader decides that he’s going to let my mom and Uncle Chewie  _watch_ Lando’s guys attempt to freeze Han in carbonite.”

“Why?”

Kylo holds up his hands. “No idea. I can tell you that if and when the Order captures someone on our wanted list, we don’t set things up so they can have dramatic, teary farewells with their loved ones. We just grab them.”

“You hate good stories, don’t you?” She’s smirking as she says it.

“When it comes to my organization grabbing criminals who’ve done us wrong, yes. Absolutely. I’m completely in favor of making sure they never get the chance to tell rousing stories of how they got away by the skin of their teeth. Anyway, they’ve got him chained up, but my Mom lunges forward for one last kiss…” He pauses for a moment… “Might have been their first kiss. I’m not sure about that. Anyway. She says, “I love you,” and he, standing there, about to be frozen in carbonite, which, by the way, had never been tested on humans before, and likely wasn’t going to be very good for him, says back to her, “I know.” Then, into the deep freeze he goes, and…” He rolls his eyes. “Their story goes on pause for three years while Luke comes up with the least intuitive rescue plan in the history of rescue plans.”

“So… that’s where it ends?”

“No. If it’d ended there, I likely wouldn’t have ever heard it as a story. Or existed, period. Time skip a bit, and Dad’s out, he’s back with Mom, and off to Endor they go. They’re trying to get the shield generator down, in yet another amazing plan… Seriously, everyone in the Empire needs to be deeply shamed by getting beaten by these twits. They brought in the entire fleet  _before_  they had confirmation the shield was down.”

“Uh…”

“And, instead of sending in a bombing team to hit the shield generator from atmo, they landed the craft,  _walked_  up to the generator, and then sauntered on in to put the bombs inside of it.”

“I’m sure they would have done it from atmo if they could?”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “Maybe… The versions of the story I’ve heard never indicated there was ever any plan other than using a faked code, landing on the planet, and then taking it out manually.”

“Shield around the entire planet?”

“Maybe… I suppose that’d be a reason not to to try and take the shield generator out from atmo… Not a reason for not firing on the generator with the ship they flew onto the planet with. Even the Rebellion had a few guns big enough to blow a hardened target to smithereens. Anyway, they’re on the ground, and of course, it’s like, six of them versus a billion Stormtroopers, because the Rebellion never believed in sending ten people if five doing the job would make for a really good story.

“And, of course, they get into a fire fight, because from what I can tell the entirety of the plan was, land, walk to the generator, without even so much as a Stormtrooper uniform, sneak in, blow it up.”

“How were they going to sneak in?” Rey asks. She’s heard Threepio tell this story before, and Kylo’s version is… different.

“No idea. Charm and the Force? They had a code to get in and land, but didn’t think to keep the ruse going.

“Anyway, fire fight, they’re trying to break in. Dad’s hot wiring the blast shields. He can hear more Imperials coming up. Mom’s covering him. She gets hit. He crouches down next to her, paying attention to her, more Imperials coming up behind them. His body is in front of hers, so they can’t see what’s going on. He raises his hands, but he can see she’s still got her blaster. He looks down, says, ‘I love you,’ she says, ‘I know’ back to him, and he jumps to the side and she starts shooting.

“Then Chewie shows up, and saves the day, because he’s got a big enough gun to shoot through the blast doors.

“Then they blow up the shield generator.

“And then, the six or so ships that had survived the fight with the two thirds of the Imperial Navy that was up there, all go streaking in against the Death Star, and ten months later, I was born.”

She laughs at that. “So… Your parents celebrated the victory?”

“So, my father tells me.”

She can feel that’s a memory that’s warm and pleased.

“Anyway, ever after, they didn’t say ‘I love you,’ but they would say, ‘I know’ to each other. And, for a while I didn’t get it, because it’d be at weird times. Like, they’d be… not fighting. They fought a lot, too, but they’d also just sort of complain at each other, and they’d be doing that, and then one of them would just look at the other and say,  _I know._ And the other one would grin.”

Rey stretches up a little bit, and the kisses him on the tip of the nose. “I know.”

He kisses her back, looking pleased. “So, you’ll be here in the morning, looking to chat with an Engineer.”

“Rose’ll probably do a lot of the talking, but I’ll be here, too. You going to tell him he’s doing a favor for ‘Mistress of the Maji Rey?’”

“Would it bother you if I did?”

“Might be better than him thinking it’s a favor for you. Or… I don’t know. Is this the sort of thing we’re supposed to… see ramifications for?”

Kylo sighs at that. “I think making sure they can’t find their way back here is enough ramifications for one night.”

“Probably.”

 

 

* * *

It takes both of them a long time to get settled down. Howling wind shaking their home isn’t helping. The fact that Rey’s not willing to leave Lirium, wanting to be close if any of the kids need anything, means they’re not getting away from the storm.

But slowly, eventually, they sleep.

It’s a dream. Kylo knows it’s a dream. Beyond that though…

“Please, Ben, you’re breaking my heart…” Rey’s staring at him, eyes wide and liquid, lips trembling, voice cracking with anguish.

“I have to do this!” He can feel his own tears, feel the heat in his body, and the rage just pouring through him.

“No, you don’t!” Her own anger is burning through her sorrow.

“It’s the only way…” And it is, anyone even marginally aware of what’s going on could see it, but she just won’t, and if he could just  _make_  her see it, if… He can feel the power starting to coalesce.

There’s no place, no sense of why they’re saying this to each other, it’s just the words, and fear, and hurt, and so much pain, and Rey’s backing away from him, tears in her eyes, and his heart is screaming, howling… If she’d only just  _look_  she’d understand, but she’s blind. Blind to the truth, to reality, to… Everything.

And he can feel his rage piling up, arcing through him, and lightning is sizzling from fingertip to fingertip, and she’s holding her… Luke’s lightsaber.

Everything around them is shaking and screaming, rending apart. Like the explosion, but bigger, all around…

“Rey, please…” He reaches his hand out, electricity sparking off his fingers. “Please…”

Tears are streaming down her face, but she shakes her head, and steps back.

The lightning arcs off his hands, and her blade rises…

And Kylo wakes with the taste of fear and hate in his mouth, and his heart pounding, clammy with a cold sweat.

For a moment, he’s not sure where he is. Silent. Everything is silent and chill.

Then he’s oriented again. He’s home. In bed. He was asleep. Awake now, really. He sits up and rubs his eyes. It’s been a while since he’s had a nightmare. Rey’s eyes open, and she looks at him, and he shakes his head.

She sits up. “What happened?”

“Bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

She can feel how scared he is. “What sort?”

He lies down again, and she snuggles in next to him. He’s not sure. It was intense, but… “Just a dream.” She was calling him Ben in the dream, and carrying Luke’s saber, and there’s no version of the present or future where that’ll be true, so… “Just my brain feeling a little twisted, I guess.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I know.” His body is sparking with electric fear. Or maybe electric dreams. At least the storm is over. That certainly wasn’t helping him stay calm.

The images keep dancing in his mind. He supposes that could be the future, a future… a future of a different past, maybe. Force lightning is a skill he hasn’t learned. Doesn’t intend to, either.

“You want to talk about it?” Rey’s rubbing his back.

“No.” He kisses her. “Just want to lie here, cuddle until my heart calms down, and go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” She yawns.

He kisses her again. “Sleep. We don’t both need to be tired tomorrow.”

She burrows further into his arms, and her breathing evens out.

His does, too. A lot more slowly. He holds Rey close, feeling her warm in his arms, her hair against his face, her skin on his.

He tries not to think about the dream, but it keeps coming back.

They were fighting again, that’s clear. She was trying to leave. That’s clear, too. They weren’t them… That’s also clear. The life that let them get here obviously hadn’t happened.

_It’s not real._

He holds her close, his chin on her shoulder.  _It could have been._

 _But it_ didn’t.

He’s here, now, with her, in their bed, in their home, that tomorrow he’ll round some people up to help it make it through the winter and…  _It’s not real._

He rubs his lips together, trying to make himself go calm and quiet.

He misses his mantra. Not the content of it. He doesn’t need to be dwelling on everyone who’s ever done him wrong. It wasn’t great for sleeping, but if he couldn’t sleep, meditation at least helped him feel somewhat more rested, but he still hasn’t found a new path on that.

It’s an old image, but it comes to him. Young Ben, sitting next to the other Padawan, though this is early enough it’s only him, M’Gll, and Runa. They’re in the chapel, and Luke is sitting before them, comfortably cross-legged, looking peaceful, and saying, “Just relax into it. Settle in, open your mind, and  _feel_ the Force. Let it guide and support you.”

It’s not without some resentment, because he was  _never_  good at feeling it, at least not the way Luke wanted him to, (In fact, by a few months later, when it became clear that Ben would happily settle into the  _dark_  side of the Force, that Luke would modify his instructions, making it clear he wanted them to settle into  _light_ feelings.) that Kylo clears his mind, and lets himself settle.

He doesn’t try to pull himself lightward or darkward, he just lets himself float.

According to Luke, the goal was to give up your cares, worries, mind, self, to the Force, and allow yourself to exist, cradled in the power that made starlight into life. He made it seem easy. Like he could just close his eyes and slip into it. Even in the best of times Ben was never great at shutting his mind up.

But… It’s late. He’s tired. He doesn’t have anything better to try. And… He knows the dream isn’t the future. It’s not a warning per se… Maybe a view of who they could have been. Encouragement to continue the path he’s on… Maybe.

He snuggles in deeper against Rey, makes sure the blankets are well-tucked around them, and lets himself sink into the flows of Force around them.

Instead of trying to shut his brain down, he lets it skitter from thought to thought, but doesn’t focus on them. They’re just things that are happening. And eventually they slow down. Everything does. There’s his life force and hers and the glow of their Force, and the flow of energies around them.

And eventually, she’s poking him in the shoulder, reminding him that if he hopes to talk to Poe before he heads to  _the Supremacy_ that he’s got to get up and moving.

And he’s tired, and really wants to go back to sleep, but…

It’s the first time he can remember praying… or communing really… and not feeling  _wrong_  about it.

And that’s a pretty nice sensation. (Even if his eyelids crusted to each other, and bones a million kilos, and how the fuck is he this tired… isn’t.)

 

 

* * *

1/4/2

 

“You look like shit,” Poe says when he opens the hydraulic ramp to his ship to let Kylo in.

“Good morning to you, too,” Kylo replies, walking up, swathed in head to toe black to combat the cold and snow of Lirium.

Poe’s just staring at him, waiting, as Kylo takes off his cowl, and brushes the snow off of himself, and then just stands there for a few moments. Finally he says, “Look, I’m not going to start reading minds anytime soon, so, you’ve got to talk to me.”

Kylo who’d been staring out into space, wishing he’d gotten a few hours more sleep, blinks a few times, remembers where he is and why, mentally curses the fact that, apparently, now that he sleeps on a regular basis he can no longer skip sleeping and still function, unless he’s got adrenaline pouring through his system to keep him going.

Poe’s still looking at him. “You okay? You and Rey didn’t have a fight, did you?”

That jerks Kylo into the present. “What? No! Uh… Nightmares. I have fewer of them now, which means I sleep now, which I didn’t used to, but because I sleep now, I turn into a mindless fig if I don’t sleep, and… Anyway… You doing anything today?”

Poe nods, pokes Kylo toward his galley, sits him at the table he’s got in there, and starts making up the coffee. “Congratulations, you’re getting old. When I hit… thirty-three I think, I suddenly couldn’t go all day and all night and all the next day without help.”

“Lovely.”

Poe hands over the coffee, and Kylo slorps it down like it’s a lifeline. “So, what do you want my help with?”

“I was wondering, if you’d like to help me get an engineer here to take a look at our very rapidly freezing water system, and make sure that no matter how bloody cold it gets we still have running water. But only if you want to, because I’m  _trying_  not to be an entitled asshole about it.”

Poe laughs long and hard at that. “And by get an engineer here, you mean?”

“Would you  _please_  fly to the  _Supremacy,_ and offer transport service to an Engineer, and whatever team and equipment he/she ends up lugging over here to get the job done?”

“A: Yes. And B: Don’t you have your own transport?”

“I’ve got an entire fleet of transport. At last count, I’ve got over 850,000 ships under my command, and last count was a while ago. That said, I am  _short_  on pilots I trust with the location of our settlement.”

Poe grins. “Awww… You feel safe with me. I’m touched.”

“Uh… Yeah… Sure.” He blinks, takes another drink of coffee, feels his brain speed up a bit, and then says, “Shouldn’t that be my line?”

Poe raises an eyebrow.

“You knew where Lirium was well before I’d ever let you anywhere near me with a weapon. That said, you appear to be trusting me enough to fly onto the  _Supremacy_.”

Poe purses his lips, he hadn’t thought about that, and then nods, and then shakes his head. “Apparently, so.”

 

 

* * *

1/4/2

 

“Good morning,” Rey says to Rose and Finn as she steps into their home, much earlier than she usually comes.

Finn is certain that  _something_  is going on just outside of his view. Rose appears to know why Rey is here, or at least has a good idea of it, but he’s not in on the story.

“Morning,” he says, as he works on getting a bite of mushed rice and fluthery into Paige’s mouth. Paige seems mostly interested in smearing the mush into her hair and skin.

The ladies are looking at each other. Then Rey goes over to his sink, and turns it on, and… He glares at it, stupid fucking pipes are freezing. Not solid, not yet, but today the water’s just dribbling out. Which means they’re pretty much hit the point where they’re going to have to keep the taps running all the time, otherwise the pipes will burst. But running all the time means the water will freeze in the drains and…

It’s a mess. And they’re going to be doing a lot of digging, which he’s not exactly looking forward to, especially digging through frozen ground, in the very, very cold air. (He’s not the weather witch Cassie is, that girl can feel a cold snap coming three days away, but he’s got an awfully good feel for it, and if it gets above -15 today, or less than ten centimeters of snow, he’ll be damned.)

He’s glaring at the water, as he says, “I guess Poe and I and the big kids are going to be doing a lot of digging the next few days.”

Rey sits down at the table next to him. “Uh…” She’s looking really tentative, like she doesn’t want to say something. “Maybe not?”

His eyes narrow further. “What?”

She rubs her lips together. “Later this morning we should have an Order Engineer here to survey the situation, design an all-weather water treatment system, and then depending on how complicated it is, later in the afternoon or tomorrow there’ll be a team here to install it.”

The first sensation is ice flowing through Finn’s body. It’s bad enough that Ren’s lurking around just down the road, and teaching the kids, and just… being… here. But this! He swallows, hard, rolling his lips together, not sure if he wants to yell, or stalk off in a silent huff.

The next sensation is hot. Hot at the fact that Rose fucking approves of this. Because she would. Because she’s  _practical,_  and she knows that no water is a deal breaker. (Messy nappies don’t wash themselves, and messy hands from cleaning up messy nappies need water, too, and… on and on and on…) Because she saw Ren for ten minutes swanning over Rey and decided he’s a  _good guy_. (He’s mentally glaring at that. He’s got a kilometer of scar tissue down his back, three prosthetic vertebrae, a pile of synth nerves in his spine to help out the ones they could regrow, but that asshole makes googly eyes at Rey for a minute, and his  _wife_ decides he’s turned over a new leaf and on the road to redemption and all the rest of that shit.)

Rose is saying something, and… Right… “Let me know when she’s here. I’d like to talk to her about what she sees and what she wants to do.”

“I think we’ll all know. Kylo’s asking Poe to bring the Engineer. I’m not sure when exactly they’ll get here.”

“So, he just orders someone here and you’re fine with it,” is what Finn manages to say.

Rose looks at him. “I asked her to ask… I mean… We need water. He can get us water, faster, easier, and for a longer amount of time than we can get it ourselves.”

“We’re not his charity project.”

“Fixing up your own home isn’t charity,” Rose says.

“His home is that flying monstrosity. This is our home, and he’s going to march his… monsters… all over it.” He glares at Rey, too. “It’s one thing if he’s just… here, but… They’re going to know where we are. You trust him, great. But the next idiot who wants to hit him, will just dig our coordinates out of the computer system, punch it in, and kill us dead, just to annoy him. That’s how  _they_  do things there.”

“Unless he said no, Poe’s going to provide transport for everyone,” Rey says.

Finn’s ready for that. “And get one of those tracking devices slapped onto his ship. They’re going to know, and someone is going to use it. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someone, somewhere, in one of those ranks is watching, and they’re going to get us killed if they know where we are.”

Neither Rey nor Rose has anything to say to that. It’s not even an  _unreasonable_  fear. Unlikely perhaps, but… Kylo Ren has enemies. A decent number of them do work for him. And the ones who don’t likely pay very well for anything out of the ordinary that Ren’s interested in, like, say a little planet off in the middle of nowhere.

“I suppose Poe could fly from the  _Supremacy,_ and you and Chewie could pick them up somewhere neutral. No chance at someone sending the coordinates where they don’t belong,” Rey says.

He shakes his head. “They’ll still  _know._ Even if they don’t know where we are, just knowing we exist is enough. They’ll come looking.”

“Finn…” Rose says, voice soft. “Either we trust that no one’s coming to take us out for being tangentially next to Ren, or we get driven out by the lack of water. This isn’t a problem we can fix, in time, with what we’ve got. And by the time you and Chewie can get what we need, and then we get it fixed, it’ll have been weeks without proper water, and… That’s just not tenable.”

He glares again, looking at the water dribbling out of the faucet. Then he gets up and heads for their bedroom, not wanting to be ‘reasonable’ or around ‘reasonable’ people right now.

 

 

* * *

When C8 said, first thing, he wasn’t kidding.

Kylo’s been in his room for less than a minute, when there’s knocking on the door, followed by, “Captian HR-0098 is waiting for you, sir.”

Kylo blinks a few times, so much for a moment to regroup his thoughts before he starts his day. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

And that moment is spent changing out of his soggy, snow-covered staying-warm-on-Lirium garb and into his current command blacks.

As he’s doing that, he knows he’s going to have to explain to HR-0098 what it is he wants done, which isn’t a problem, and why and for whom, which… might.

With the exception of his intimates, he hasn’t introduced Rey as his wife, yet. Part of it is setting her into people’s minds as the Mistress of the Maji. Part of it is that wedding thing, which he’d rather like to do, and at least as he understands it, one generally has the wedding before getting a spouse, but… well, obviously not for them, but… That’s complicated. Part of it is being aware that his  _wife_  will absolutely get a lot more attention than Rey likely wants, and not all of that attention will be complimentary.

Yes, while they were talking to people, most of them were pleased to meet her, and see that he had a ‘beloved companion’ as the the news people appear to be reporting, but… He could feel it at the dinner, some people are very interested in securing their own pet as his wife, and him already having one complicates things in ways they don’t like.

He didn’t feel any threat to Rey, that would have been taken care of, fast, but he did feel a lot of people looking to manipulate the situation.

And he’s just… not sure what to do with that.

But, it doesn’t matter. He’s dressed, and the person who is going to fix their home is in his office, waiting for him.

 

 

* * *

A moment later, he’s out of his room, pleased to see that C8 has coffee already on his desk for him, and appears to have offered a cup of it to HR-0098.

She’s younger than he would have expected a captain to be, but… She’s got a number, so she’s been with them since she was a baby, and if she tested well, she likely got her first command rank before she hit fifteen, so the mid-twenties she is now isn’t unreasonable for a Captaincy.

“Captain.”

She shoots into a standing position, at high attention, waiting for him. “Master.”

“At ease.” He gestures to the chair she’d been sitting in, and she gingerly returns to it. He grabs his cup of coffee, sips it, feeling something like life coming back to him. (Which usually happens after cup number one, not cup number three.) “I’ve been told you’re the person to see about setting up a water treatment facility.”

She nods. He can feel she’s nervous.

“Really, ease.” He adds a bit of Force to his voice, just a bit to help her relax. “Mistress Rey has a project… We have a small settlement… and the current water processing is vastly under-powered to handle the cold. I was hoping you could help.”

“Whatever you need, I can do it. How many kiloliters per hour are you looking to move?”

Kylo blinks. “Uh… I have no idea. There are about twenty-five people, five faviers, a few other small animals, and three micro farms.”

HR-0098 blinks back at him. He wasn’t kidding about small. “Less than one probably.”

“Possibly per day.” He’s fairly sure a kiloliter is a thousand liters, but he’s kind of nebulous as to how much water that is. His bath in the next room maybe? Do they go through that much water an hour at Lirium? A day?

She nods at him. “How are you currently moving it?”

“We have a pump in the lake, and about two klicks worth of pipes. The problem is our ho– colo— settlement is very cold, and they’re freezing, and the lake we get the water from is also freezing, so we need some way to get water out of the lake, even if it gets colder.”

“Ah… What kind of pipes do you currently have?”

Kylo doesn’t know the answer to that, either.

“You don’t know the kind of pump, either?”

He shakes his head.

“And before you ask, I don’t know what kind of water processing we’ve got on the pump. I know where the pump is, and if I turn the handle at my sink water comes out.”

He can feel HR-0098 wondering where Kylo lives. She’d assumed he lived on the other side of the door he’d come through, and now she’s not sure.

“Do you know how deep the pipes are?”

“That I do know, about fifteen centimeters.”

HR-0098 blinks at him again, and he can feel she’s never dealt with pipes that had a smaller than fifteen centimeter diameter, so the idea that they’re buried less than fifteen centimeters below the ground is stunning to her.

“Do you want me to… make suggestions based on… this…”

“I’d like to take you to the settlement, have you take a look, and make suggestions for how to get water through it, preferably by tomorrow.”

She doesn’t blanch. It’s clear she wants to. Apparently  _by tomorrow_  is fast for any sort of piping project, even a tiny one.

“How many people can I have for this project?”

“As many as you need to get it done as fast as possible.”

He feels her relax a bit at that answer.

“Budget?”

“Same. It doesn’t have to be absolutely top of the line. It’s got to be good enough to get through the winter. Come spring we can re-do if need be. I’m willing to sacrifice some longevity right now for greater speed.”

She asks the logical follow up question. “How long is winter?”

Kylo grits his teeth. “I don’t know that, either. At least six more months, likely.”

On the upside, HR-0098 is no longer terrified of him. The downside is she’s thinking he’s something of a twit. Or suicidally reckless if he’s got a ‘settlement’ on a planet he doesn’t know how long winter lasts for. Well, he is reckless on things like that, but… Nothing to be done for it.

He’s not reckless about what comes next. “I’d like you to come with me. I have a ship that will take you to our settlement. You can survey, figure out what you need, and then take care of it.”

He’s not exactly asking, and he’s not exactly ordering either. He’s absolutely making it clear with his voice that she’s never going to tell anyone about where she’s going today and tomorrow.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He hits his comm, calling up Poe. “You close?”

“I’m in the queue. My ship is the next one to get scanned.”

“Where are you landing?”

“Sub dock 45-B.”

“I’ll be there, with Captain HR-0098, soon.”

 

 

 

* * *

Poe had forgotten the sheer  _scale_ of the  _Supremacy._

And right now, he’s rather wishing he could keep forgetting.

His current ship is  _not_ tiny. It’s a decent-sized cargo freighter. Fifty kilotons, which, for the kind of work he does, is exactly right.

He looks like a speck of dust floating next to the  _Supremacy._ Fighters look microscopic. It’s just  _stupid_  how fucking big that ship is. Bloody thing is the size of a small moon, or a huge asteroid.

And, of course, because the loading and unloading bays are toward the bottom, he’s got to fly under the thing, and it just blots all of the light out of the sky. One moment there were stars and the glow reflected off of several nearby planets, and then there’s just  _nothing._

It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, and then find the small lights leading him toward the landing bays.

He’s got his comm open, and for a heartbeat, he just can’t talk. He’s… going to ask permission to  _land_  on the fucking  _Supremacy_ under his own name in his own ship, and… Fear’s up to his throat, trying to shut it down, and…

He can  _feel_  Leia behind him, sense her, and he doesn’t turn around because if she’s not really there he doesn’t want to see it, so…

“ _Supremacy_ this is  _67-Micah,_  pilot Poe Dameron, seeking landing authorization.”

There’s a moment of silence followed by, “ _67-Micah_ , we see you and have you scheduled for landing on sub dock 45-B. You’re third in the queue, and there should be about a twenty minute wait until you can go through the scanners and land.”

“Noted.” He checks the glowing labeled docks, finds 45-B, and pulls up behind two other ships. He can see several Order ships hovering around the first one in the line, likely scanning, and after a few moments they move one ship closer to him, and the scanned ship moves forward into the dock.

Slick, easy, professional. Just like a million other places he’s landed, just with… Yeah, that’s a lot of scanning ships, way more security.

He’s not sure what they’re scanning for, but his first guess, something that’ll blow the atmo in the landing bay, and likely a lot of the ships around it, isn’t getting into their docks.

 

* * *

Kylo and HR-0098 get to the dock just as Poe’s touching down.

And they are causing quite a stir. Because Poe is flying a cargo ship, he’s in one of the cargo bays. Most of the ships around him are unloading raw materials, food, equipment, and the like.

None of the people who work down here with mostly droids and mech suits have ever seen anyone with a rank higher than Lieutenant. So the  _Master_  down here, on his own, with a Captain, has them dumbstruck.

A lot of them are staring. Staring so much that the unloading is beginning to get sluggish.

Finally the Lt. in charge, who apparently spends most of his time up in the control tower notices the slow down, and comes down, yelling orders, until he, too notices Kylo, and goes dead silent, frozen, and then begins yelling even louder, and everyone around them jerks into action.

Kylo doesn’t smirk at that. At least not where anyone can see it.

But, as Poe’s stepping off his ship, he’s got the idea he can feel the amusement behind the look on his face.

“Captain HR-0098, this is Poe Dameron.”

And as soon as he’s said it he feels Poe tense. HR-0098 doesn’t. Poe, even without Kylo’s skills can feel she doesn’t recognize his name, which means this meeting is going to go rather smoothly.

“Poe will be taking you to our settlement. Once there, you’ll talk to Rose Tico and Mistress Rey, and they’ll fill you in on what exactly it is we need there.”

The Captain nods, eyeing Poe’s ship, which is a rather odd choice for this sort of transport run.

Poe nods to his hatch. “Hop on in. I’ll be there in a moment. Want to talk to the Master a bit.”

She’s not comfortable with that, but Kylo nods, so she follows Poe’s order.

Once she’s in the ship, he says to Kylo, “That was close.”

Kylo nods. “Yeah. I didn’t think about it until the two of you were face to face. She doesn’t know who you are.”

“Good. I’d rather not have to fly with my hand on my blaster.”

“She’s not armed.”

“You hope.”

“I  _know._ You think I’m going to let an armed Order officer on Lirium? I may be reckless, and possibly insane, but not in that direction.”

Poe inclines his head to indicate that’s not a version of insane he ever thought Kylo might be. “Uh huh…” He looks around at the ships and the mechs and droids unloading, and the people supervising. “You want to talk about one of the most surreal experiences of my life?”

Kylo smirks a bit. “I can imagine.”

Poe looks around again, able to see a lot of Order people, none of them in stormtrooper armor, pretending to not be watching them. “You’re creating a stir by being down here.”

“I’m getting that sense.”

“When we come back, she’s going to want to bring people and equipment, so this ship will work, but if something like this happens again, a transport that doesn’t stick out this badly, let alone you down here, would be a good plan.”

Kylo nods. “I have a personal transport ship.”

“Your  _Silencer_  isn’t subtle.”

“I have a non-Order branded transport, too. Tonight, I’ll bring that home. If you or Rey need a ride at some point…”

“Good. What does she know about where I’m taking her?”

“It’s a settlement. Rey’s… maybe mine… I… didn’t have a good story prepared. I also haven’t explained who exactly Rey is, other than the Mistress of the Maji.”

“Who you occasionally tongue on stage in front of several million people.”

Kylo rolls his eyes at Poe. He can see people watching them, but none should be close enough to hear what he’s saying. “Like you wouldn’t have if you’d had the option.”

Poe gives him a little shove. “Kylo, there are so many flavors of wrong with that sentence, I don’t even know where to begin.”

Another eye roll followed by, “Get her back to Lirium. Don’t tell her too much about who’s there and why.”

Poe waves that off. He doesn’t need instructions on how to do this. “The person I can’t charm with piles of creative bantha shit hasn’t been born yet. That said, Finn’s not exactly looking forward to this.”

“Going to cause trouble, not looking forward to it?”

Poe shrugs. “After he got done glaring at Rose and Rey, he came to me to bitch about it, and found I was getting ready to fly, and… He’s had better days.”

“Well, he can sulk about it while he gets his next shower.”

“Be nice. You wouldn’t enjoy it if a pile of New Jedi came and invaded your home.”

“Didn’t. I didn’t enjoy it when Luke showed up.”

Poe raises and eyebrow at that, then nods, and says, “One day, we’re going to sit down and talk about ghosts. But today isn’t that day.”

Kylo almost asks, but he can feel Poe really doesn’t want to touch it now. And he’s trying to not be an entitled asshole, so he doesn’t just barge into Poe’s mind.

 

* * *

“He’s bringing some of  _them_  here,” Finn says to Chewie, voice bitter, as they go through their pre-flight plans.

_Them?_

“Order fuckers. Supposedly it’s an engineer and a team to put in a water processing system.”

Chewie thinks about that for a moment, and then says,  _Better them freezing their nards off chipping through a million meters of frozen shit than us._

Finn looks up from the news reader to him, almost startled, and then thinks about it for a second more, and laughs. “Fuck… Okay, yeah. You’ve got a point.” He wasn’t exactly loving the idea of having to re-dig the pipes.

They’re quiet for a few more moments, both of them catching up on the news. “You see this,” Finn points to a report about a small settlement not ridiculously far from them.

Chewie howls in agreement.  _Rich pickings if no one else has noticed._

“You know anyone there?”

_Nah. We’d be flying in blind, but…_

“But…” The news is reporting that the settlement on Hitlnor IV had a recent fire, and that fire took out their bacta plant. Also, judging by the rest of the report, it’s harvest time. So, if they were to swoop in with a lot of bacta, which is dirt cheap on planets that can make it easy, they could probably get a lot of fresh produce, which they’re pretty low on, unless they want greens, radishes, or carrots. No one on Lirium has had a piece of fresh fruit in weeks, so… Finn shrugs. “Not like we can’t use the bacta here if we can’t sell it. One of the little boogers scrapes something every day, so…”

Chewie’s nodding, and starts looking for the closest, least expensive bacta producing planet.

Finn goes back to skimming the news, looking for another planet likely experiencing a shortage of something they can fill their hold with on the cheap. Preferably something either on, or near, a bacta producing planet.

That holds his attention for a few minutes, but he sees Poe’s ship landing, and he glares at it.

Chewie lays a hand on his shoulder.

Finn nods, and then makes himself focus on the pad in his hand.

 

 

* * *

HR-0098 has had a lot of difficult assignments.

In the twelve years she’s been in charge of setting up water treatment facilities on different First Order bases and worlds, she’s done it with not enough resources, not enough time, not enough people, and often with locals or the Resistance actively working to sabotage everything she was doing.

After all, in a camp, or city, or any concentration of people, the easiest way to take them out is to reroute a pipe or two and lead the waste line into the clean water. Or sneak into the water treatment facility and muck with it. Or break a few pipes and kill the waste removal system.

Any of those will cripple a battle force faster that any ground attack.

And with  _many_ fewer casualties to the attacking force.

So… she’s used to doing this with more security people than engineers, and with local populations that hate her, and…

This is not that. Okay, she’s been stuck in a cargo ship with an overly chatty pilot for more than an hour. And he’s not exactly answering any questions she might have about this place. (And after the second non-answer, she stops asking.) Even though he also won’t shut up.

And it is kind of nice to be able to sit up front, in the cockpit, and actually watch the stars zoom by. Her personal rooms don’t have a view, and her job means she’s basically never sees the sky. So that’s nice. Once they break atmo, and the pilot says, “Welcome to Majirium,” she’s got a view of… nothing. The whole bloody thing is white.

Still, Majirium… Mistress Rey of the Maji. Maybe this is the Maji homeworld.

Granted, as they get lower, she can see that Master Ren was not exaggerating when he said twenty-five people. There’s barely a dozen buildings on the ground, so, if this is their homeworld, it’s awfully sparse.

Or, this Rey isn’t Mistress of much…

Or… shit… It could literally be a school. She’s a mistress in the sense of teaching classes…

Huh…

Poe, the pilot, lands the craft, and a moment later, he gets up, and then vanishes. He’s back a minute later with what looks like the blanket from his bed. He’s also got a coat, a scarf, a hat, gloves, and goggles.

“I don’t have extra winter gear for you.” He hands her the blanket. “If your great coat isn’t warm enough.”

She’d roll her eyes, an Order greatcoat is designed to keep the wearer comfortable from 15 to -35, but she doesn’t have a scarf, hat, or goggles, and with all the snow outside, having something to put over her head may be welcome.

Whoever she’s bringing back to work here will have full winter garb.

When Poe opens the hatch, there are two… people… she steps closer and realizes they are women, and, she doesn’t know the shorter one, but she recognizes the other one… She bows, low, before saying, “Mistress Rey.”

The other woman appears to be smirking under her goggles and hat. And the pilot doesn’t snigger out loud, but she’s got a feeling he wants to. He introduces her to the women, and she learns the other lady is Rose Tico.

She’s also got a feeling that the blanket wasn’t a bad idea. Any part of her covered by her coat is fine, but the wind keeps trying to open her coat, and it’s creeping up under her trouser legs, and trying to whip down her collar. She’s wrapping up.

“Master Ren wasn’t kidding about cold.”

Rose nods to her. “No, he’s not. Cassie says we’ve got another cold front coming in later tonight, so it’ll be even less pleasant tomorrow. More snow this evening, as well.”

Everyone she brings to this will definitely be covered in head to toe winter garb. Starkiller wasn’t exactly cozy, and they’ve had people stationed in even colder locals over the years, and for once, they’re really going to test the limits of that gear.

Rose smiles at her, and says, “Come on, let’s show you the issue, fast, and then you can think and work somewhere warm.”

HR-0098 nods. She appreciates that.

 

 

* * *

It’s, honestly… quaint.

It’s a tiny little settlement on the edge of nowhere, with way too many kids and not nearly enough adults, and the kids keep ‘wandering’ over to check her out.

HR-0098 gets the sense that they don’t get a lot of visitors here.

She’s also getting the sense that Mistress Rey is, in fact, literally a teacher. Of a tiny little school. That’s not, exactly, what the news feeds about the ‘beloved companion’ were hinting, but they didn’t outright say anything one way or another.

It’s occurring to her, the people talking on the news feeds likely didn’t know. Because if the way the littlest of the kids stare at her is anything to go by, no one else has ever been here to see this place.

She’s looking around at the scattered buildings jutting up from the snow, and if this is a place for visitors she’d be stunned.

The one thing that isn’t stunning her is the job. She could have done this as a first year. It’s an idiotically simple job. From what she can see, the current set up is just fine, it just needs to be lower, and given how the surface layers of the planet are going to freeze solid, set up with a heating system.

Get a drilling rig, plop it in a retaining bubble, down into the lake they go, find where the frost line is, go a bit deeper, fill it with plexiflass pipes, wire it into the shipstones they’ve already got here, hook it to the buildings, maybe, if Ren’s willing to add an extra day without water, she can get a decent filtering system into the lake, too, and they’ll be good to go.

Granted, that’s half of the problem, getting water into the settlement.

Getting waste out…

They’re using cisterns now, and that’ll likely keep doing the job. Flushing them out if winter lasts too long and they fill up while the ground is still frozen solid will be annoying, but compared to the time it’d take to get a full sewage treatment plant up and running here, they’re probably in good shape.

She’s in… She’s not sure. Rey’s house? Maybe? (The Master’s house? Does he actually live here? The only thing she could think of to tell that, pictures on the walls, aren’t up. If he lives here, there’s nothing obviously his in the kitchen/living area.) She doesn’t think this is Rose’s house, because Rose has a baby on her chest, and she doesn’t see a crib or any baby things in here.

So, sitting in a pleasant, mostly white and cream colored room, munching on some cookies and sipping a mug of tea, she talks mostly to Rose about what they’re going to do, and Rey just nods along.

Finally, Rose says, “So, how many people are you going to need to do this?”

“Master Ren said I could have as many as I need, but given how small everything is, putting more than four people on it would be overkill. There’s only so many you can fit in a drilling rig, and we only need the one rig to do this.”

“Will you need extra shipping beyond Poe’s to get everything here?” Rey asks.

“No. I won’t even fill half of his hold. If we ever put in a full sewage treatment plant, we’d need more cargo space than he can offer, but until the ground thaws, that’s not worth it. Not with the system you’ve currently got.”

Mistress Rey nods at that. “Good. Starting tomorrow then?”

HR-0098 shrugs. “It’s important, right?”

“You saw the kids,” Rose says. “We can make do without water for a few days, but we’d prefer not to.”

“It was an hour getting here, probably another hour to collect people and things, another hour back. If you can put us up for a night, we could get a few hours in tonight, and wrap up early-ish tomorrow.”

Rose and Rey glance at each other.

Rose says, “We do have an empty cottage. It’s… Really just a ceiling, walls, and floor.”

“Running… well, dribbling water, a cooker and cooler, and a refresher. It’s better than a tent, but there aren’t any beds in there right now. You’d basically be camping,” Rey finishes.

“We’ve lived harder than that before. Let me get back to Mr. Dameron, and before the sun sets, we’ll have started on setting up the retaining bubble and getting through the ice on your lake.”

Rey and Rose walk her back to Poe, and HR-0098’s got the sense that they don’t want to leave her alone in the settlement, though what they think she can do here, by herself, she doesn’t know.

But, it’s not exactly like being wary of stranger is a new thing in the Order.

 

 

* * *

Once HR-0098’s off, Rey says to Rose, “Is he going to be okay with them here overnight?”

“I can’t imagine it’ll be any worse than them being here during the day.”

They both share a look. Both of them well aware of the fact that sinking suns and slumbering minds have a tendency to intensify both the good and the bad.

Finn’s feeling okay when he sees the Order engineer go heading off with Poe. And he’s feeling pretty proud of himself. He did  _not_ march on out of the Falcon and demand that she get no where within a thousand meters of his wife and daughter.

(Likely because, as Chewie pointed out, a strong wind would knock the girl over, so between Rey and his wife, she’d be over-teamed in about a minute. And while Finn would have liked to suggest that First Order-trained officers were tougher than that, at the rate Ren’s been picking up new people, he’s got not idea if the girl actually is a First Order-trained officer.)

Still, he breathes easier when he sees her get back onto Poe’s ship, and head off.

Chewie watches him eyeing the girl, and then says  _You know it’s going to be fine._

Finn rolls his eyes. “Yeah, the part of the brain that  _thinks_  knows that this woman is not going to show up at Ren’s house and blow it up, because she’s not fucking stupid or suicidal. Ask me how close to in charge the part of the brain that thinks is.”

Chewie gives him a long, knowing nod.  _Been there, done that. Wanna go shoot some shit?_

“Nah. Want to wrap this up, have a good night with my wife. Pretend a herd of stormtroopers aren’t going to show up here tomorrow to do Force alone knows what. Snuggle my girl. Soak up some family time, because day after tomorrow we’re in the air for at least a week.”

_Good plan. Could use some baby cuddles myself._

“And Paige is always good to cuddle her PapaChewie, so I think we can work with that.”

Chewie grins at him.  _Good._

Finn shoves the trade roster aside. They know where they’re going, what they’re hoping to pick up, and where they want to trade it. He sits back a bit. There are a few hours before supper. An hour before he’d normally get home and start working on supper, so… “I appreciate you not telling me to get over it.”

Chewie smirks at that.  _It’d be like telling you to fly. You’re not going to do it, so why waste my breath.”_

“Rose… doesn’t think I should… but I know she’d like it. Rey would, too. Even Poe’s somehow been charmed by this bastard into… Getting along.”

_Charmed? Unless he’s learned a lot of new tricks, charm isn’t in his arsenal._

“Magicked?”

_Probably not._

Finn raises an eyebrow at that.

_I’m not saying he couldn’t. I don’t know if he can or not. Luke could but I don’t think he ever used it more than once or twice. Obi Wan certainly could. I’m sure Yoda could. I don’t know if Ben can, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Doesn’t seem the type to care enough to make people like him. Not like that._

“I wouldn’t know. Other than he hates being called Ben apparently.”

_Fuck that. I was there when they named him, and I’ll call him Ben whenever I like. He’s lucky I don’t call him Benny._

“His nickname as a kid?”

_Benny, Ben-ben, Little Starfighter, Lando’d call him that. I’ve got all the peeing on the rug and running around naked stories. He was a baby, just like everyone else._

Finn’s voice is dark. “Except for when he wasn’t.”

_Except for when he wasn’t. Toddler tantrums are… unpleasant for seasoned parents, and terrifying for virgin parents when the kid can blow the power if he’s particularly upset about not getting a cookie. Worse when blowing the power freaks him out, too._

“Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that.”

_And I don’t blame you at all. Give our little Paige a year, and she’ll be running around, yelling at you for trying to get her to drink out of the wrong sippy cup, and then yelling when you give her the right one, and then yelling some more because yelling is making her tired and unhappy._

Finn lets out a  _long_  sigh. “Thank you, Chewie. That’s a whole new nightmare to add to the list.”

Chewie grins at him.  _Yes, but just think. She’s in a tearing fury, and then you can take her over to Uncle Kylo, and plop her angry, angst-y self on him, and laugh your way home for a nap._

“And then have nightmares about what he’d do to an angry, angst-y toddler.”

_Look disconcerted and chew on his lip. Probably get Rey to help both of them calm down._

“Look, yes, I pretty much  _know_ that’s likely true. Rey’s telling me that. Rose is telling me that. Poe’s flying his ass into this guy’s lair. Poe flew into his lair, and obviously flew back out of it. Ostrae gave me a handful of cookies… So… I  _know,_ but… I  _don’t._ ” He eyes Chewie. “You’re less angry about him than the last time we talked about this.”

Chewie shrugs.  _His dad’s really happy with him right now. It rubs off some._

“Some?”

_He’s happy, and that makes me happy, then I remember I’m talking to a fucking ghost, and why I’m talking to a fucking ghost, and… He would have been a ghost by now anyway. Except, if he’d gone naturally, maybe he wouldn’t have been a ghost… Maybe he’d have just been gone. So… It’s complicated. Still… The things that make Rose happy, they make you happy, too, right?_

“Her being happy makes me happy. I’m not always keen on the things that make her that way.”

_That works, too. This makes Han happy. And… we wanted Ben to be happy… Well, we honestly never thought he’d get there. We wanted him to be not murdering people and vaguely content-ish doing it._

“That’s a remarkably low set of goals.”

_You didn’t know him as a teenager._

Finn inclines his head, and decides he’s rather glad of that.

 

 

* * *

When he gets home, Rose is already there, starting on dinner. Paige is on the floor, working on getting up onto her knees and rocking back and forth, seriously thinking about doing some crawling soon.

He picks her up, and cuddles her close, inhaling her sweet baby scent, and feeling her cuddled against his skin, and tries to imagine… a dark, Force sensitive kid.

And decides he’d rather not.

Instead he puts Paige, down, pulls off his coat, and snuggles up to his wife, kissing her warmly, before asking, tentatively, “How’d it go with the Engineer?”

“Her name is HR-0098…”

Finn shakes his head. He doesn’t know her. Though, he supposes, it was possible he could have known her. If she’s on water, and he did sanitation. He knew… or at least knew of… a few of the water and waste engineers on the  _Supremacy._

“And it went fine.” Rose turns on the water, and a bit trickles out. “She’s bringing the crew in tonight. Should be here soon. And by the end of the day tomorrow, we should have full running water. And it should stay warmer longer, because the pipes will be heated.”

Finn doesn’t like hearing about stormtroopers showing up sooner rather than later. But Rose also knows he’s something of a shower fiend, and  _really, really_  likes a long, hot shower. Likely because he never actually had a water shower until he was with the Resistance. And, at least lately, with the water so much colder before it hits the water heater, it doesn’t get as hot, and it gets to lukewarm a lot faster.

“What’s a crew?” Finn asks. Rose is cutting vegetables… He knows that’s the last of the fresh veg in their cooler. He reaches for the meat she’s got out, and begins to chop that up with her.

“Her, four workers. They’re going to sink a retaining bubble into the lake, find the frost line, and put the pump under it.”

“Can’t get more than four into a bubble like that.”

“Exactly. She’s sure the job won’t take long.”

He glares a little at that. “First Order jobs never did. Take too long once, and you’d be ‘reconditioned.’ Take too long twice, and they’d kill you.”

She winces at that. Then she turns to Finn. “You’re planning on leaving the day after tomorrow, right?”

He nods.

“Okay, here’s my deal with you. When they come back, we’ll get HR-0098 away from the crew. Bring her in for tea or something.  Have her set up the rooms for her crew. You wander on out and talk to them. If they want to run, plop them on the  _Falcon_  and get them out of there.”

Finn blinks at that, and then smiles, wide. “I don’t tell you I love you nearly enough, do I?”

“You say it every day.”

“And I should say it more. I love you.” He bends down to kiss her, and she kisses back.

 

* * *

Just like Rose said, once everyone has landed and gotten started, she and Rey pull HR-0098 away, and the crew is out there, on the lake drilling through the ice, and setting the retaining bubble into place.

He walks toward them. Hot thermoses of tea in hand. The snow’s pouring down right now. More than anyone who spends most of their time on a ship would be used to. But there’s still a good thirty meters of visibility, maybe a bit more because the sun is down, but the snow catches the light of the houses, and the lights the Order men have set up so they can see what they’re doing. By Lirium standards this isn’t a bad storm.

The four of them are looking pretty miserable. They’ve set up windbreaks. They’ve got First Order Winter garb… Though as he gets closer he can see it’s  _not_ First Order winter garb. It’s still white, but there’s no armor, the symbol is wrong, the workers have name tags (and only two of them have numbers).

It’s… not what he was expecting.

Still.

He idles over, and says, “Fucking frosty today. Thought you guys might like something tasty and warm.”

And just like every soldier in the history of soldiers left out in a cold place doing a job they’d rather not, they’re all over hot drinks.

So, they slorp down the chai, and thank him for the hospitality, spend a moment introducing themselves and shooting the shit. And Finn’s good at it. Another life, a different choice, he’d have been one of these guys, or at least very similar to them.

When they hand the thermoses back to him, he says, quietly, “I’ve got a ship, if you want out, I can get you out.”

 _That_  has gotten their attention. Two of them are shifting from side to side, very uncomfortable that this apparently nice man has just said something  _wrong_  to them. The other two are staring at him like he’s insane.

One, (Finn mentally rolls his eyes) named Hrver, at least according to the patch on his coat. Because of course his coat has a patch with his name on it. Hrver, like all of them is wearing cold weather gear which covers his face, but it’s clear it’s there to keep him warm, not anonymous. Hrver looks at him nervously before saying, “Why would we want to do that, sir?”

Finn slumps. Of course. Yeah, he claims he’s changed things, but… Hux method training beats the idea of any life other than the First Order right out of you.

Then Hrver throws a twist at him. “We can leave whenever we want. Ralph used to be on this crew, but he left last month. Decided he wanted to try and make a go of it on Rndll. Fucking stupid, if you ask me. But he had his five in, and wanted to settle down, try something new, so…”

“Ralph?” Finn asks. Anyone with their five in should have a number, at least on this sort of crew.

“That’s what he decided he wanted to be called. New life, new name. RL-478F. That’s the number they gave him, but he wanted something different, so… He took it. He and his lady up and left. Anyway, I’ve got three and a half years to go before I’ve got my five, and I’m not heading out a moment sooner. After that, maybe. I don’t know.” He glances at the video feed of the retaining tube he’s putting into place so the pipes can stay insulated and warm. “I like doing this, and it looks like the Colony Emancipation Program is going to need people with my skills, so… Anyway, that’s later. Right now, this is good.”

FR-9985, the man working the forward drill says, “You’ve got to test into the Colony Emancipation Program, and you’re shit at tests, Hrr.”

Hrver glares at him. “I’ll ace that bloody test. They say you get into that program, there’s a monthly bonus, and they’re talking about single billets.”

“I’d heard that,” Ygrine says. “Of all the things I miss about home,  _not_  sharing a room with five other assholes, all wanking and farting at me all night is the top of the list.”

“Awww… does the Prince miss his comfy room at home?” FQ-4586 says.

Finn’s stuck with whiplash.  _This,_ griping about shit, feels like,  _home._ He’s spent about a billion hours doing it with other First Order soldiers. Names and plans, and a program they’re trying to get into, that’s  _different._

Ygrine glares at him, and adds, “If you’d ever had your own room, you’d fucking well miss it, too. Some things you don’t want a constant audience for.”

Finn tries not to snigger at that, because of all of the things he appreciated most about getting out of the First Order and into the Resistance, having a space of his own was pretty high on the list.

He decides to ask, “What’s the Colony Emancipation Program?”

FQ-4586 replies, “So, we go to planets that have stuff we need, and see if they want to stay part of whatever system they’re part of. Most of them are someone’s colonies. Supposedly, if they say, ‘fuck this deal, we’re out of here,’ they can sign up with us. We head over, spruce things up, and then slowly pull back over time. Test well, have useful skills, and you get to join the group setting up the colony. It’s a ten year period of time, so if you stick around for the whole thing, you get to be an Order citizen in a newly freed planet.”

Hrver’s nodding. “I’m seriously thinking about it. Assuming we can get a good colony planet. Some of them are pretty rough, but… Get in at the beginning, start fresh, build it up, build your stake. I can get used to that idea.”

“Just got to pass the test,” FR-9985 says.

“I can study.”

“Sure. You can barely read. Study all you want,” Ygrine says with a sneer.

“Prince-y here is doing his time until he can stand for election,” FR-9985 adds. “Poor boy’s slumming it with the likes of us, and wishing every single day that Daddy didn’t make him join up.”

“Fuck you. Some of us have homes and lives that need to be protected. Some of us are here because there’s something greater than ourselves at stake.”

Finn raises an eyebrow. The idea of joining the Order to protect your home is something that hadn’t occurred to him. Though he does vaguely remember Leia saying something like that. He doesn’t recognize Ygrine, but he wonders if he was part of the Resistance, or at least nearby it.

Ygrine, as well as Finn can tell with someone wearing goggles, a hat, and scarf, looks annoyed by this. “Anyone with eyes can see you either join the Order or you hope to hide. We’re too damn big to hide, so…” He shrugs. “Here I am. Two of my sisters, and a few cousins are here, too. And yes, come that first slate of elections, we’ll all be citizens, and we’ll  _all_ be up for election. If you don’t want to be run over, you damn well better be steering the ship, and we’re going to steer the ship.”

Finn laughs. “Ren’s going to steer the ship. You’re just making it look pretty for him.”

Ygrine’s eyes are sharp as he’s overlooking the tiny settlement on the plain. “We’ll see about that.” Then Ygrine looks around. “So what is this place? We saw Mistress Rey for a second when we got here. This her pet project or something.”

Finn doesn’t like that look, doesn’t like Ygrine, doesn’t like any of this. He hates the fact that he knows what he’s going to do next with this. Hates the fact that by protecting himself and his family, he’s going to protect Ren, too.

His teeth grit. “Or something.”

 

 

* * *

Finn’s annoyed when he goes to Rey’s house after supper. They’re wrapping up, and Ren is… He grits his teeth harder. Stupid bloody things are going to end up cracked at this rate. The Master is…  _drying the fucking dishes._ Megalomaniacs out to shatter the galaxy don’t dry the fucking dishes. Husbands at home, with their wives, killing time, talking about their days,  _dry the fucking dishes._

And when he sees Finn, and feels the… everything coming off of him, he does do that stupid chewing on his lip thing. It’s like he’s going out of his way to look like a nervous puppy.

 _A fucking_ huge  _nervous puppy who practically cut you in half._

Finn grabs one of the dry ones from Ren and puts it away. At least he doesn’t have to look at the bastard when he says it. “Ygrine means trouble, for you, for us. And apparently he’s got a few sisters, and some cousins in the Order, too.”

Ren nods. “You think him knowing about Lirium will be an issue.”

“Yes.”

Ren’s face grows dangerous. And Finn feels that spear of ice up his back and in his bones. “I’ll take care of it.”

Rey’s washing the dishes, listening. She doesn’t seem terribly concerned.

Finn is. He’s got the image of Ren and the lightsaber, and his eyes hot and cold and the power and dark just pouring off of him in the forest pounding through his mind. “How? You’re not going to kill them, right?” Just because he doesn’t want Ygrine to become trouble doesn’t mean he wants the man gutted like a fish.

Ren glares at him for that. “I have a few more tricks in my book than murder. They’re here tonight, camping in the empty cottage. Tomorrow they’ll finish the job. I’ll escort them back to the  _Supremacy._ Everyone on the team will be under the impression they set up a water system for my personal vacation retreat. On an island of temperate plains, with green rolling hills, trees in the hollows, and a well set up, flourishing, farm.”

As he’s saying it, Finn’s seeing it. “Will it hold?”

“Well enough. Unlike a lot of memories I’ve built for other people, this one I know inside and out. They’ll never have any reason to think they weren’t there.”

“Is that… home… for you?” Finn asks, hating that he’s curious.

“Rey is home for me. That’s just a place I lived for a while.”

 

 

* * *

When Finn’s done with that, Rey offers to walk him home. “You okay?” she asks.

“Can’t you just feel it?”

“I can feel you’re conflicted.”

He rolls his eyes. “Probably a good word for it. I know he’s your man, and even I can see you love him, but… Did you hear what he said? Like it was no big deal. He’d scramble five people’s memories, on the fly, just like that. Yeah, I suppose it’s better than killing them, but…” His head shakes, and his eyes are earnest. “How do you trust someone who you  _know_ can do that?”

Rey sighs. “I just do.” They take a few more steps. It’s only a few hundred meters between his house and Rey’s. Then she says to him, “You still remember the fight. He’s willing to take you hating him rather than alter your memory of it.”

Finn brushes that off.

“You might as well just say it. I can feel it’s bugging you.”

“I hate the fact that the safety of my family is tied to his safety.”

“The Force doesn’t do things like that as an accident.”

He narrows his eyes. “Han once told me, ‘That’s not how the Force works,’”

Rey’s beyond skeptical of that, but… “Then break the tie. Head off. Settle somewhere else. We’ll… talk and send letters, and I’ll visit from time to time. Clean ship. Won’t lead anyone to you. He’ll just be part of my life you can ignore. And I’ll be Auntie Rey who comes from time to time with neat presents and cool stories.”

“Until the Order shows up in my corner of the galaxy.”

“And does what? Opens up a recruiting station you don’t have to go to? Even Chewie trusts him to behave.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about. Not now. I don’t  _like_ him, but I know I can turn my back on him. Sort of. I keep telling myself that. I know it’s real, and wrong, and… Anyway… It’s getting caught in the crossfire when someone comes gunning for him. That’s real, too.”

“We’ve all got enemies.”

“Not like him.”

Rey doesn’t have an answer for that. She knows it’s true. She doesn’t like it. And she can see a time when people who get too close to the Order will be targets. She can just  _feel_ it. They’re going to upset too many places, and people will  _hurt_  them for it.

And innocent people nearby will get hurt, too.

Finn knows she understands. He nods. “It’s fucking freezing. I’m going home. See you in the morning?”

“Yeah. You heading off soon?”

“Day after tomorrow. We’ve got a week long run coming up.”

“I’ll miss you.” That’s true, too.

He rolls his eyes, and pulls her into a hug, giving her a little kiss on the cheek. “I’ll miss you, too.”

 

* * *

1/5/2

Finn watches the Order workers head toward Poe’s ship at the end of the next day. He’s far enough away he can’t see or sense their expressions, but he’s sure that Ygrine did not miss that Ren is there. That he came from one of the cottages to join them in Poe’s ship.

And then they vanish into the ship.

And he tries to sense, tries to feel it, but… Whatever Ren’s doing in there, he can’t feel it.

But somehow, a collection of people are going to get a very wrong idea of what they just did.

And he doesn’t know what or how to think about that.

He turns away from the window of his house… His  _home._ For better or worse, this is his home. This is where lives with his wife, and where his daughter was born, and… Everything in the world that really matters to him is  _here._

He steps to the sink, and turns it on. Water comes pouring out. Clean, clear,  _hot_ , gushing water.

Finn closes the tap, and closes his eyes, and tries to find a way to make this make sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Guys,
> 
> Not a lot of art on this chapter. I've been re-texturing my characters so they look a bit less comic-booky when I render them. So... not much illustration here. That said, if you follow the blog: kerylraist.wordpress.com , you can see the new skins on everyone, and what I can do with them when I really work on the texturing. (Not quite done getting them all up, but over the next few days, lots of goodies coming.)
> 
> That said, it's gonna be majorly NSFW, because it's three collections, The Nudes: Finn, Poe, and Jon, The Nudes: Kylo, Rey, and Rose, and The Lovers.
> 
> Anyway, happy reading everyone! Also, I'm planning on a short, mid-week update, too! :)


	4. The Banker's Son

1/6/2

 

The Order, like the First Order, like the Empire, works on an Imperial Standard Day. Which is, pretty much, the Coruscant clock. A Coruscant day is 24 hours and three minutes. Since they’re not on planet, they shaved the three minutes off the day.

It just makes everything easier to not have to deal with that.

(Why Coruscant didn’t make their hours just a hair longer is a question currently lost to history. It does come up on referendums often, but keeps getting defeated because of… tradition, or something.)

Order recruits have four portions of their day. Eight hours of active duty (broken into two four hour shifts). These are hours spent doing whatever it is they do. Four hours of light duty. These are spent studying, in lessons, working off demerits, or on punishment duty. Four hours of free time, which can be used for whatever the recruit likes (Usually broken into two two hour segments). Eight hours of rest time. They don’t do bed checks, but recruits are supposed to be located in their (or someone else’s) cots during this time.

Robert Ygrine, having finished his second shift on pipe maintenance, moves onto his second free time shift.

He’s glaring at the universe around him as he heads back to his bunk. Each of them has their own bunk, a one meter by one meter by two and a half meter rectangle carved into the wall with a soft mattress, a too small and too hard pillow, too rough sheets, and a fairly nice blanket. They’re stacked on top of each other, two high. Six of them to a dorm room. Each dorm has it’s own eating space, a cooler for keeping personal snacks, a refresher, and whatever assorted lounging furniture he and his bunk mates have managed to buy, borrow, or steal.

The bunks do have a small ‘privacy’ curtain, so his whole life isn’t constantly on display. But it’s not the same as having his own suite, containing a bedroom, office, entertaining space, and bathroom. (He  _really_  misses the bathroom. He works the pipes, so he knows there’s water a plenty on the  _Supremacy_ but they don’t waste any of it on showers for recruits like him. One of the perks of rank, you get your own rooms and an actual, water shower. Now he’s stuck sharing a sonic with five other guys.)

It’s especially not the same as home when he wants to do something like have a ‘private’ conversation with anyone from home. His father made sure he had an encrypted comm when he got here, but he’s still got to talk into the damn thing, and… There’s just… nowhere he gets to be alone.

Which means he’s got to sound like some sort of stupid, excited, Ren fanatic whenever he calls home. He can gush all he wants about all the great stuff he’s doing here, and if anyone overhears they just assume he’s a half-wit who’s really pleased to be here.

(The fact that he’s only this enthusiastic when he’s calling home makes his bunk mates think he’s trying to pull something over on his parents. He doesn’t mind that they think he’s scamming his parents. As long as they don’t think he’s scamming  _them._ )

He hopes, really hopes, that bringing yesterday’s assignment home will make his parents decide that his sisters can do the job, and he can go  _back_ home.

It probably won’t work.

Between his sisters and cousins, finding pretty  _girls_  who might want to drag Ren into their bed wasn’t difficult. Hell, two of them volunteered. He knows his parents and aunts though a man was a long shot, but they wanted the angle covered, and he was the only one of the boys who was even close to being okay with that.

And then the bloody asshole showed up with a… No one’s entirely sure.  Woman. Whatever it is she is to Ren, she’s obviously a  _woman._ A  _woman_  he’s obviously  _quite fond of._ And his father and aunts’ plan to honeytrap Ren have to be withering on the vine by now.

At the very least, their plans to use  _him_ to honeytrap Ren should be dead by now…

Maybe…

Between that and what he can bring them… With any luck they’ll tell him that he can be on the next ship off the damn  _Supremacy_ and back to Ygrith Prime. Let his sisters rot here trying to catch that bastard’s eye. He’ll help run their election campaigns when they’ve got their citizenship.

* * *

 

Sometimes, there’s more privacy in a crowd than in small quarters. He takes his comm with him to his favorite noodle shop on the D deck, gets a bowl of r’hathran broth and rice noodles, fried egg on top, and finds a somewhat less packed back bench to sit down on.

The only good thing about being here as an Ygrine is that he does still get allowance from home, so he can still afford things like a decent fucking bowl of noodles. (And, well, okay, they’ve got people here who make some fucking awesome noodles. He wasn’t expecting that.)

The other trainees are squeezing by on a thousand credits a month, which… Well, he supposes if you eat in the canteens (free), spend your free time studying (free), or training (also free), that thousand will last a long time.

But he’s got a taste for real food (much too expensive, at least compared to home), real entertainment (buggering shit, whoever’s got the monopoly on that is bleeding them dry of credits), gambling (once upon a time, he was considered good at that, and now he’s got the sinking suspicion that he won a lot because people wanted to get in good with Myrton Ygrine’s son. But he’s learning new tricks,  _fast._ ) and whores (actually, they’re fairly reasonably priced. At least some decent company is easy to come across here.)

So, if he had to live off of it, his thousand credits a month would last him about five days.

But he doesn’t.

For which he is grateful.

Just not as grateful as he would be if he could go  _home._

Which reminds him of why he’s out here. He takes the comm out of his pocket flicks it on, punches in his father’s number, and waits.

“Robert!”

“Hey, Dad,” he forces his mock excited tone into his voice.

“And how’s our newest member of the Order doing today?”

 _Fucking awesome._ “Just great. I’ve got two extra free shifts today, because I was on round the clock yesterday. Got a really cool new assignment.”

“Excellent, and what did they have you doing? More pipework?”

“More pipework. I never thought I’d be good at something like that,”  _I never thought I’d have to do hard, annoying, physical labor with my own two hands. Rescue me, you bastard!_ “but at the end of the day, seeing something I built myself is pretty satisfying.”

“I’d expect.” His father’s just oozing satisfaction at that. “There’s nothing like knowing that you, personally, put something together that will outlast you, and benefit others for a long time to come.”

Robert takes that to mean he’s not going home anytime soon. He’s also muttering under his breath, thumb over the microphone on the comm about how his father has never built anything in his life. Or, for that matter, ever did anything more taxing than count credits.

“So, just good pipesetting?” his father asks.

“No. Me and my team, because we’re the  _best,” or the ones who had a free shift_  “got picked to go and set up the water system for Ren’s personal vacation spot.”

“Oh… That’s wonderful! I’m so proud of you!”

And that’s exactly what his father says it is. He’s  _very_ pleased to hear this.

“I know. It was a  _major_  honor. We were there for almost a whole day. Set the whole thing up. It’s… not what I was expecting. It’s not like we see him regularly, but… You kind of get a feel for him, but this… It’s a little farm.”

“Ren has a farm?” Myrton Ygrine can’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“He and his lady. He was there to see what we were doing, check in I guess. Make sure we did it right, and we did him proud. His lady was there, too. It looks like there’s an overseer, someone who lives there full time with his wife, and a few hands. I think he breeds faviers.”

“Good grassland then?”

“Lots of grass, gentle hills, orchards. Domes. Apparently the man likes domes. There was a lake, or at least the smell of a lake, I didn’t see one, but you know…”

They have lakes at home, beautiful ones, and they just… shift the air around them. He misses them. Misses grass and sunlight and real air, and…

“Anyway, Captain HR-0098 came up to us, and I was nervous because… Well, you know, it’s usually not a good thing when the Captain shows up to get you to do something, but this… We were on a transport for two hours and seventeen minutes, hyperspeed. I’ll never get used to that, stars streaming by us, and then we were landing on the grass, and… There it was, a little farm that needed a water treatment system.”

“That’s excellent. Did you see him personally?”

“Yes. When we wrapped up, he came to thank us for the work we did, and told us he appreciated the effort. The Cap blushed like a school girl. I’m not sure if an officer, let alone anyone even close to as high ranked as he is, has ever thanked her or told her he appreciated what her team had done before.”

“Would you say your team enjoyed the job?”

Robert thinks about it. “Actually, yes. It’s precision work, but still, nice to get out for a while. And when you work a double, or in our case a triple, because we were out, though eight of the hours were rest time, you get extra off time, and the time we were in transport counts as work time, but there’s nothing to do but sleep or relax, so that was good. Him saying thank you on top of it… Yes, I think they liked that, a lot.”

“I see. Have you talked to your Aunt Andromeda recently?”

“Aunty Dra? No, not recently.”

“Pity, she was on board for the year-end extravaganza.”

“Ah… And how did she like that?”

“She said it was a blast. A very nice young man, an officer by the name of Jon Frakes, made an impression on her. Apparently, he’s a friend of Master Ren and Mistress Rey, and enjoys a good party.”

Robert knows what that means. He’s not leaving here anytime soon, and his parents have indeed decided his honeytrapping skills are no longer necessary, for Ren. But, like everyone else, he’s also noticed the young Lt. Colonel who is often near Ren, so…

Better than the Grand Marshall or the Grand Admiral, both of whom appear to be only slightly older than Snoke.

“I’ve seen him around from time to time. He’s not generally in my circles, though. He’s in design and diplomacy.”

“Ah… Well… I suppose that’s a specialty you could aim towards.”

If his test results were anything to go by, the answer to that is a resounding no, but he doesn’t see any reason to inform his father, if he doesn’t already know, that not only did he not test into any officer track skills, but that the skills they did think he’d be useful for should only put him in the path of Frakes, or any other highly ranked officer, if his personal shower were to explode.

And, honestly, on the ship, someone with a higher security clearance would likely get picked for that.

Granted, he did get picked for Ren’s retreat, so… There’s something.

“Did you see what sort of ship the Master piloted to get to his home?”

Robert thinks. And for a second there’s this sense of cold on his back, and goggles digging into his eyes, but… “No. I know he’s got a command ship and his TIE Silencer, though. He came in after we were bedded down for the night, and left after we did, too.”

“Of course. I’m sure he works all the hours of the cycle.”

“I think so, too.”

“Thanks for calling in, Rob. I know your down time is precious, so I won’t keep you.”

“Thanks, Dad. Give Mom a kiss for me.”

“You know it.”

And then the comm goes dead. And Robert Ygrine goes back to his noodles, and his dreams of getting  _off_  the  _Supremacy_.

 

* * *

Myrton Ygrine closes off the comm call, and ponders for a moment.

Ren has a ‘vacation home.’

That’s… intriguing.

Add in what Andromeda was able to glean from the First Year party, that apparently Ren’s lady has a… monastery… maybe…

It’s possible that Robert may have stumbled into one of the most valuable, and currently unknown pieces of information in the galaxy.

The location of the Maji.

Maybe.

Or perhaps Ren does just have a little out of the way spot for when he wants some time with his lady, alone. He certainly wouldn’t be the first powerful man to decide that he wanted a place outside of the prying eyes of the rest of the world.

Rather foolish to let outsiders do work on it, and know it’s his, though.

Granted, when it comes to personal security, Ren does seem to border on rather foolish, frequently.

Myrton notes the date. Working back to when his son would have had to have left the  _Supremacy._  He also notes the transit time.

And then sighs. Robert didn’t tell him when in the day they left, and depending on how fast the  _Supremacy_ was traveling, that could make a  _lot_ of difference.

His son, whom he loves, because he is his son, is… well… something of a professional dilettante, and… honestly a stint in the Order might not actually be the worst thing that’s ever happened to the boy. (Though he can certainly feel Robert thinks it is.) But, from what Myrton can tell, and from what the girls are telling him, Rob is never going to move above drone level work, not on his own talents.

And, again, worse things could happen to him. Making him spend five years actually doing  _something_  could possibly help him appreciate his position here more when he gets home.

Cynteenia, his second child, on the other hand, tested into the Navigational program. It’s possible, that when he speaks to her next, he might be able to get across the idea that he’d really appreciate knowing where the  _Supremacy_ was on when Rob left, what speed it was moving, and at what heading. From there, they can chart a few hours at hyperspeed, and narrow down the collection of potential planets for Ren’s private house.

Long, slow, boring, and likely expensive work.

But, good information always is.

Also slow, and likely expensive, but not boring is figuring out what to do with that information once they have it. If it’s Ren’s private home, it will fetch a very pretty price, in favors if not gold. If it’s his Lady’s monastery… That’s the hottest question in the galaxy right now.

If he could get eyes on her, and what she’s doing…

Who is Lady Rey? Where does she come from? What is a Maji? What does she do? Getting those answers and then leveraging them…

 _That_  is well worth the time and money to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short update today. Bigger stuff Saturday/Sunday. :)
> 
> So, a lot of you had comments about Finn, and well, rather than choke up this chapter with more note than story, I wrote a blog post for it. https://kerylraist.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/in-defense-of-finn/ has all the details of what I think I'm doing with Finn, and why.
> 
> The short version is this: Finn's not reading this story, and he doesn't know Kylo anywhere near as well as we do. His fears/distrusts/anger is reasonable given what he knows and his personal history. And, well, honestly, I'm a bit surprised that not everyone thinks so. Anyway, more on that in the blog. 
> 
> That said, I've already written the chapter where the two of them finally begin to have something approaching a real conversation, and I have a feeling you're going to enjoy that one, a lot.


	5. The Machinations of Old Women

1/8/2

 

It has not escaped Ellie Kinear that Mirina Frakes is still on board the  _Supremacy._

What’s she’s not sure of is  _why._

She does have a hunch though. If anyone at that party was likely to have  _complicated_  feelings about Kylo Ren having been Ben Solo once upon a time, Mirina Frakes is that person.

The question is: what to do about it?

But, of course, not knowing exactly what those complicated feelings might be… Makes determining the correct plan of actions… difficult.

Ellie sits in the private chambers she and Pat share. The  _private,_ routinely debugged, on  _her_  personal ship, chambers. She sips her tea, and thinks, and wonders.

Thirty plus years ago, when the Emperor was still hanging onto sane by his fingernails, and he was living with the third of four mistresses, Ellie was one of her intimates. One who intentionally lived slightly outside the wheel and thrum of the formal courts of the Empire.

She was, of course, invited to important functions, and traveled in the right circles, but as Pat’s wife, she was part of the military sphere of power, and not the political/senate circle.

Selina Beau, the Emperor’s Mistress, was, of course, the highest lady of the political circle.

And both of them benefited by having in intimate friend in the other’s circle.

And both of them, and many others, benefited by having a good friend who had many very wealthy, very well-connected, very talkative clients, who, in a relaxed setting, often with a glass of wine in hand, had a tendency to say things they likely shouldn’t have.

Enter Mirina Frakes, who was perfect for the job. She’s not the only well-connected courtier that Ellie collected over the years, but one of the best, and most useful.

And even to this day, only a handful of people ever knew what her real job in the Empire was.

But the Emperor didn’t stay sane. He disbanded the Senate, blew up Alderaan, and a few weeks after that, he was seeing conspirators in all corners. (Of course, by blowing up Alderaan and disbanding the Senate, the number of conspirators against him likely did increase a thousandfold. People will allow someone on the verge of insane to rule them, but once it’s clear they’ve crossed the line…)

Including his lady of more than twenty-five years.

Before Selina Beau fell, Mirina and Ellie were able to get her out. Officially, she’s been dead for thirty-five years, in actuality, she’s been quietly living in a small villa on Granium V. They had the feelers in place to see the winds shift before they did. So, a few days before the warrant for her arrest was to go live, Selina went for a pleasure cruise and “oops” crashed. It was a great tragedy for about ten minutes, The Emperor spent a huge sum of credits on an extravagant funeral and tomb, and then, as soon as the cameras turned away, he installed his new favorite into Selina’s place.

The Emperor’s new pet, Alia Dib was easy for Mirina to woo, because of course, by then a Frakes gown was synonymous with high fashion. To not have one, if not more, was a direct snub, and one that Alia couldn’t possibly afford. Especially not after Selina ran the Emperor’s court for almost twenty-five years.

Ellie decided it was a good time to see what Pat was up to. The close, personal friends of the ex-mistress are not, generally speaking, welcome in the court of the new mistress.

And that’s where Ellie and Mirina’s relationship ended, because shortly after, that’s when the Empire ended.

But it’s not where it began.

It began a long time ago, when a Senator, who had once been a Queen, needed a favor. A small, discreet, favor. One she was willing to pay well for.

And she was such a sweet girl. And a good client. And so pretty. And… well, sweet, pretty girls sometimes find themselves in need of certain favors. Especially sweet, pretty girls who were from planets that didn’t approve of sweet, pretty girls making sweet, pretty babies without a husband.

And, while it was true, that  _technically_  the sweet, pretty girl had a handsome young husband, it’s also true that the cost of revealing that was  _much_  higher than what either of them wanted to pay.

So Mirinia would,  _of course_ , do her a favor. Over the years she did a  _lot_ of favors like that.

After all, a pregnancy is fairly easy to hide, for a while at least, from almost everyone, except for people who see you naked, or, the people who make your clothing.

And Mirina was the latter.

And over the course of several months, as Padme Amidala’s sweet, pretty belly kept expanding, it became clear that there was an opportunity brewing here.

There was a chance to… align things in a way that would benefit everyone.

After all, it was becoming clear that the Republic would not forever remain a Republic. And it was clear that the would-be Emperor would never chose to produce a legitimate heir. His mistress knew from a long and intimate association with him that he’d made certain that would never happen. Since he was young, he’d had visions of his offspring murdering him, so he made sure said offspring would never be born.

So, a power vacuum was going to happen sooner or later.

And here was a Queen, a Senator, with her Jedi Knight lover, and as it became clear to those who listened to who had meetings with whom, that said Jedi would rise  _high_  in the government…

And it was obvious that Palpatine knew what he was doing. He would clear the board, leaving himself the last of the great powers.

But even Palpatine was mortal, so…

So, sooner or later, someone would have to succeed Palpatine, so why not his pretty apprentice and the Queen who had chosen him as her consort? Why not their line? Ellie, Mirina, and Selina were sure that Amidala could be molded correctly, her man seemed… conveniently stupid. That appeared to be part of why Palpatine liked him, too. Powerful, but gullible. They could shape him in a direction they’d like. Amidala and Skywalker would likely make a pile of extremely attractive babies, and those extremely attractive babies could go on to create a stable dynasty to rule this new Empire.

They’d been working the angles on that for almost six months when everything went sideways, Amidala died, Anakin, who’s primary advantage over Palpatine was that he was young and  _looked presentable,_  (the secondary one being he was easily manipulated) suddenly  _didn’t_ , and those dreams died.

And then, two decades later, went even further wrong when the Skywalker thing happened.

But… Now… Fate appears to be realigning things back to where they were trying to get them.

After all, if the three of them had had their way… Kylo Ren, who was apparently born Ben Solo, and likely would have carried the name he chose for himself, Amidala, had their plans worked, had fallen back into their laps, and managed to grab the start of an Empire for himself, so…

Better late than never, right?

“Sevvie?”

RI-7V, her personal service droid hovers nearby. “Ma’am?”

“If Madam Frakes is still on the  _Supremacy,_ please invite her to join me. If not, clear my schedule so I can see her.”

“Done, Ma’am.”

 

 

* * *

1/10/2

 

“Were you waiting around for me, old friend?” Ellie asks when Mirina comes to her ship, looking around at the lush, private apartment with a nod of satisfaction.

“I could have been.”

“But you weren’t, were you?”

“Truly private?” Mirina asks.

“We’re not being listened to. As you know, anything I get, Pat gets, too. Alas…” Once upon a time, anything Mirina got, that would be valuable to the right people, her husband got, too. And if it’d be valuable to others, well, those others often, in a ’round about sort of way, got the message.

“ _Alas_  covers a lot of ground,” Mirina replies, sitting down in the chair next to Ellie’s small sofa.

Ellie offers her a cup of tea, and gestures to the tower of silver trays laid out with small sandwiches and cakes. “It’s not a proper tea. Even with the might of the Order, I can’t quite get one out here, but it’s close.”

“Close will do,” Mirina take a cake and nibbles it while Ellie pours, and fixes, she still remembers how Mirina likes it, her tea. “You know, I’m starting to come to the conclusion that there never actually was a proper tea. We keep telling ourselves that we’re getting closer and closer, but I don’t know anyone who’s ever actually had one. At least, not since the Empire fell.”

“Perhaps a stable empire is a necessary precursor for a proper tea…” Ellie says.

“Did we have them under the Republic?” Mirina takes a sip. This is good. It’s just not  _right._

Ellie sighs. “I think we did, but it’s been a long time.”

“It has.” Mirina sighs a little, too, and puts her cup down. Between the two of them, they can do this until the end of time, not getting any closer to the meat of the conversation, so… “You want my help, and you know I’m loathe to give it, and why I’m loathe to give it. And, likely you know the real reason I’m here is trying to pry my son away from the spawn of those murderous sluts.”

Ellie slaps a fake smile on her face. “Well, let’s not be vague when straight out will do.”

“I’m tired of vague.”

Ellie arches an eyebrow. “If he’d been anyone else’s son, you’d be ready to rally the greatest, vaguest vague for the cause.”

“If I’d been talking to anyone else, I would have, but what’s the point? You and I both know the score of this game. You want me to throw in with the  _Rebellion._ ” It’s a curse in Mirina Frake’s voice. “I’ve spent decades taking their shit, smiling along, and allowing them to just storm all over the galaxy, pretending that… everyone I loved was horrible, and I didn’t have much to do with them, and it was so  _tragic…_  and I’m done with them. I’m not going into their service.”

Ellie rolls her eyes a bit. “You always were dramatic.”

Mirina glares.

“If Anakin, Obi Wan, and Padme hadn’t screwed everything sideways, that boy would have been born on a throne that we’d put him on. The future we spent so much time working for is literally looking us in the face, and you want to spit on it because we had to take a detour to get there?”

“My husband’s death was not a detour!”

“Yes, it was. And there was a time you knew that. But on the off chance it’s not abundantly clear, do you know what name he chose for himself, and for his lady, when they aren’t being Lord and Lady Ren?”

Mirina sighs, making it clear she’s humoring Ellie.

“Amidala. She introduced herself as Rey Amidala. Now, tell me, with everyone who knew that name having died before that boy was conceived, how exactly was he to know that name? Pat and I didn’t whisper it in his ear.”

That has Mirina beginning to look interested. It’s true that she’s never been one for faith. It’s also true that over the years she’s noticed more than the occasional useful coincidence, and she  _knows_ not to spit in their faces.

“He found it, and he’s reclaimed it. He should have been born with that name, and now… We can put him where he belongs. Where he would have been born if things had worked properly.”

“The fact that he was able to look up his grandmother isn’t a sign.”

“It should be. And it should be telling you where you need to go, what you need to do, and who you need to do it for. From everything I’ve been able to tell, you didn’t get out of the game just because the Empire fell. You snugged in with the First Order the second it started raising trouble for the New Republic, you’ve been feeding the right people the right information for decades, under your son’s nose. Then you plopped him in here. Does he honestly think he started up with the First Order as an officer because they really needed a dressmaker to design armor?”

Mirina doesn’t deign to respond directly to that.  _Many_ people who start military life in the officer track have an in. “He earned his promotions.”

“Yes, he has. Between luck, skill, and the fact that he’s been willing to work his ass off and  _on_ anything in his path he’s done remarkably well.”

“He married Lane. He didn’t just sleep his way into that job.”

Ellie’s voice is arch. “Just.” As soon as Pat brought word of Jon Frakes, both of them got very excited. Once they got into his files and saw he was, indeed, part of the Frakes family they thought he might have been, she got reading, and asking, and looking. And Jonathon William Frakes, has had, to say the least, a  _storied_ career. Like many women and several men who rose high and fast in the First Order, and before that, The Empire, Jon Frakes is not only insanely good at his job, he’s also ridiculously pretty, a good flirt, sexually flexible, and willing to put  _all_ of his skills to use. “I  _know._ He’d likely marry Kylo if he swung that way. You taught your boy well. He’s learned every trick you, your girls, and your clients have shown him. But that’s the reason you got him that commission. You’d been rather hoping he hadn’t. Or hoping he’d learn some new tricks.”

Mirina glowers. There are spheres of power, and spheres of power, and the ones she’d been hoping her  _son_ would excel at don’t appear to be the ones he did.

“If Bill had lived…”

Ellie shakes her head. “Bill would have had even less idea of what to do with your son than you did. I’ve raised a lot of boys, and helped raise more of them, and there was absolutely no chance that you, or Bill, would have turned your son into a proper, narrow, Imperial. The only thing Bill could have possibly done was make him miserable trying to shove him into a mold he was utterly unsuited for. Be happy he found a way to use the skills he’s good at, get over your disdain for the Rebellion, and help me, and him, get the Court of Ren up and moving.”

“The Court of Organa,” Mirina’s voice is sharp and bitter.

“Do you really want to give up now? Or change sides? There are factions that want to see the Court of Ren fall, but the most fervent of them is what’s left of the Resistance, which was run by Organa. I know they’ve got a few people gathering forces on the edges of the galaxy, looking for a way to hit us. Do you want to throw in with them? Or do you want to put your intellect and intelligence behind the man who killed the Resistance.”

“Or made peace with them. Or was put in here by them. No one ever suggested Organa couldn’t do the math. She had to know she couldn’t win by force of arms.”

That gets a look of withering scorn from Ellie. “I’ll ignore that, because you don’t know him. But it’s abundantly clear to anyone who’s spent more than an hour with him, one on one, that he was not here on his Mama’s orders. And if you don’t believe my ability to judge character any longer, judge this, Kylo Ren is the man who killed Han Solo.”

That gets a slight widening of the eyes and a swallow out of Mirina.

“Yes, that’s going a  _trifle_  far just to sell a role. The reports of the Battle of Crait, the last military encounter with The Resistance, shows that Kylo Ren took the field, personally, with his lightsaber, and cut Luke Skywalker in half. He did it hours after he took his throne by cutting Snoke in half. They call him the Jedi Killer, did you know that? The whispers were that he personally destroyed Skywalker’s Jedi Academy. I never met Organa, not personally, and I know you haven’t either, but nothing, nowhere, ever suggested she’d send anyone, let alone her son, in to do  _that._

“So, I ask you, Mirina, how much more blood do you need from the boy? Does he have to personally murder his mother, too? Or was just betraying everything she ever stood for enough?”

Mirina’s regrouped, and re-centered her disdain for the Republic. “Is he? Or is he resurrecting it in his own hands?”

Ellie shrugs. “I don’t recall the New Republic being fond of the idea of an executive branch. They eventually decided they needed one, but… They were too afraid of another Palpatine to give it enough power to be useful. And for all their talk of democracy and fairness, I don’t recall them actually attempting to do anything but go back to what was there before the Emperor rose. Ren’s interested in trying something  _new,_ and we both know it’s been a bloody long time since anyone’s tried anything  _new_  in the political sphere.”

“Because there are no  _new_ ideas. Just old ones reheated and served on different platters.”

“Well, if this one isn’t new, it’s old enough no one in living memory remembers anyone trying it.”

That gets them to a momentary impasses. And for a moment, both of them sip their tea, staring at each other, thinking.

 

 

 

Finally Mirina, says, “He’ll be bad at it. There’s too much of both of his grandparents in him, and not enough of the adopted ones. Last time we backed an Amidala who was thinking too much with her heart and… cunnie, just about everyone died.”

“He won’t be bad at this. Or if he is, he’ll be bad in an endearing way. I know you felt the rush of the crowd. They like him. And her. Or the idea of them, and… You remember her, right… The long flowing hair, those perfect dresses, Naboo countryside in the background… We could have run that forever. Could have made everyone stand up and cheer. They’re not quite as pretty as Amidala and Skywalker, but I think they’re more compelling. And I think if we work it, we can run this to the end of time. We can use them to build a stable dynasty.”

“Again,  _until they all died horribly_. There’s too much of the Great Urus in him. Too much of Anakin’s fire and Amidala’s sorrow. He’s thinking with his heart and shaft, and it’s all focused on her. The rest of this is… whatever he does when he’s not doing her.”

Ellie shakes her head. “Amidala wasn’t in the game just for her gonads, and Kylo isn’t, either. He might have started this for her, but… He’s in it for him, too. Maybe she was the push he needed to get moving in the right direction, but she’s not the endgame.”

Mirina’s awfully certain Ellie’s wrong, but… Kylo’s only half of the story. “She doesn’t have the temperament for it.”

“Not yet. But she’s trainable. And… I think, when she comes into her own, she’ll bring something truly interesting to the table. People like the idea of one of their own rising up high enough to rule them. She’s perfect for that. Orphan from the desert who becomes a queen. They’ll eat that up. Couple that to his royal birthright… It’s  _perfect._ ”

“You told me that about Skywalker and Amidala, too.”

“And I wasn’t wrong. If they hadn’t imploded, people would have liked that.”

“ _If_. And these two…”

Ellie stops that before Mirina can get started. “Are rock solid stable with each other. Even you don’t doubt that about them. When we were playing with Amidala and Skywalker we were playing the game with children. This time, we’re not playing with children. We’re playing with people who have been through this, together, and come through it. They know the stakes of the game… We can spin this out, we can  _win_ this, with them.”

Mirina’s eyes narrow. And Ellie can feel, or at least imagine Mirina seeing a moment of their shared past. A quiet room off the main floor of Mirina’s atelier. Small cups of tea, savory and sweet nibbles, the scent of Virnania Lilies and hot house roses, and a girl, almost a woman, with a stomach that wasn’t bulging, yet, but would soon, a need for a favor, and discretion.

And all the myriad opportunities of that moment.

Ellie says, “He’s her grandson. We didn’t know her long or well, but we knew her enough, and, more importantly, we knew the opportunity she represented. Take the time to sit with him, and really  _look._ There’s Anakin in there, and, of course Leia and Han, and Luke and Snoke, though he’s cutting that out as fast as he can, and… Padme’s in there, if you look for her.

“Sit with him, have a chat, about something other than looking pretty for a party, and  _see._ Then remember the plans we made, back when his grandmother was young, and the Chancellor was moving into position, and hope was still a thing.”

Mirina’s eyes narrow. “Neither of us can afford to be hopeful, not any longer.”

Ellie shrugs. “Maybe. But I’m still allowing it for myself.”

Mirina’s eyes narrow further.

“And if you won’t feel it for yourself, feel it for your son. He’s going to go so far with this.”

“They told me Bill would go far, too.”

“Bill did go far. Your son will go farther. Grand Marshall, Diplomatic Corps. Right hand of the Master. The paperwork is filed. All he has to do is claim the title, and it’s his.”

“A pretty title, but no real staff under him. And only a few million under his command. I know Ren wanted to make his people feel special, counted, appreciated, but he just let everyone know that he’s  _vastly_ below the targets everyone thought he was at.”

Ellie hadn’t thought listing their numbers was the greatest plan, ever, either, but… What he lost in surprise, he gained in loyalty. She hopes. “He’s working on that. They’re coming, too. Coming in droves. He’ll be where he’s supposed to be in less than five years.”

“In less than five years he’ll have real enemies, too.”

“And hopefully  _friends._ ”

Mirina glares. But Ellie can feel it, the anger is fading. She pulls the last card out of her sleeve. “You’ve dressed Senators and Republicans. You’ve made their weddings sparkle. You’ve listened to their confidences and passed along their secrets and lies. You’ve done it to ensure your position and the position of your children. All you have to do is  _keep_ going.”

 

 

* * *

1/10/2

 

Kylo lays another data pad with yet another report to the side. So far today he’s approved paying navigators more, and offering them full citizenship after three years. He’s done the same for experienced pilots and mechanics.

What he hasn’t done is magically come up with the money to actually pay them those higher wages.

He reaches for the next pad, hopefully details on the first of the potential meeting space deals. Hopefully  _lucrative_ details.

Jon says they’re getting nibbles, so…

He’s pulled his cup of coffee close, taking a sip, and opened up the latest pad (Not what he was hoping for. This one is a status update on his new dreadnoughts, so he’s not disappointed, but he feels like this is a fairly low priority item… He checks the date… And it’s been on his desk for six weeks, so… Low priority indeed.) when he feels half of an argument.

Kylo puts the pad down, and closes his eyes for a moment.

Mirina Frakes is in what had been his throne room, and from the feel of it, is attempting to intimidate C8 into getting a meeting with him, even though she doesn’t have an appointment.

C8, of course, not only cannot be intimidated, but he also has been told that today and tomorrow are days where no one other than Schiff, Kinear, or Frakes has any access to him, because he’s wading through the million plus reports that have been sitting on his desk for, apparently, at least the last six weeks.

So, he can feel an irate Force signature, small, dim, untrained, but very much there.

And he can imagine what C8 is doing to cause said signature to be so irate.

And he sits, rubs his eyes, and wonders if this is the sort of thing where, if he ignores it, pretends he can’t feel her out there, that it’ll just quietly go away.

But, given who this is, and what Jon’s said about her…

He stands up, stretches a bit, flips the top datapad so it’s face down, takes one more sip of his coffee, heads to the door, opens it, and says, “C8, it’s Jon’s mom, just let her in.”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“No. But apparently we’re going to do this anyway.”

Mirina stares up at him, looking… he was expecting her to look pleased about being let in, but… She’s… not… exactly. He’s having a hard time reading her right now. Partially because he’s not really trying, and partially because she’s shielding.

He’s fairly sure she’s not doing it intentionally, at least, not beyond the most basic level of being aware that keeping her thoughts to herself is of value right now.

So he shrugs, steps out of his doorway, and gestures to his office. “Come in. Is there anything you want? C8 can get you anything on the kitchen rotations.”

“A cup of P’Talian Brusk tea, two sugars, one citronen slice. Two almond biscuits on the side.”

C8 looks to Kylo, and he nods. Then he glances at the chronometer. “Might as well bring my lunch, too.”

“Done, sir.”

Kylo pulls one of the chairs at his conference table to his desk for her, though he doesn’t wait for her to sit before he seats himself.

She follows him, eyes on him, and his office, and back to him.

After a moment of it, he finally says, “I’m not sure if I wasn’t clear about this before, but I don’t exactly enjoy being looked at like a zoological garden exhibit.”

She shrugs. “Cost of being a leader. People will look.”

“Yes, but in my experience very few of them look at me and try to catalog how similar I am to whatever that large, shaggy black thing in your mind is.”

“It’s an Urus. And the answer appears to be, fairly similar.”

Kylo shrugs at that. “If it is, it is.”

She watches him a bit longer. “Your lady thanks droids.”

He thinks for a second, realizes he didn’t thank C8 for fetching lunch. “I will when he brings the food.”

“Would you have if I didn’t remind you?”

“Eventually. I don’t always remember, but I do more than most people, I think. Why does it matter?”

“It probably doesn’t.”

Kylo stares out at space, and sighs.  _Jon’s mom, be nice_ is going through his head.

She’s still just  _looking._ Well, not  _just_  looking. He can feel her Force trying to read his.

That gets a sigh from him, too. “Ellie Frakes said that once upon a time, you couldn’t walk twenty meters without bumping into a Force user on Coruscant.”

“Near the senate or the Jedi temple, yes.”

“Then you have to know this isn’t going to get you what you want. Your Force is mild and untrained. Honed by decades of reading people, but you never really learned how to use it. Mine not mild. I’ve been formally trained in how to use it by two of the most powerful Force users of the last century. My babyhood was spent with probably the best untrained Force user of the last century, and I’ve had at least a few years of honing the skill of just getting a feel for people. You will not get what you want just by looking. My walls are  _considerably_  better than your skills. That said, you’re Jon’s mom, and he’s happier when you’re content, so just ask, and I’ll talk to you.”

She continues to look at him. Just feeling him. The wave of exasperation off of him staggers her, but only for a second.

“It’s not a question I can ask, Kylo.”

“Yes, well, being stared at is annoying, so if you’d at least point me in the direction of what you want, we could get this done a lot sooner.”

“I knew your grandmother.”

“I understand many people did. Queen of Alderaan not being a particularly obscure position.”

“No, not Breha. I knew of her, too, but I’m talking about Padme.” That’s got his attention. Mirina is continuing to stare at him, trying to peel away his skin and walls and  _see_ him. “She was young and hopeful and in love and stupid. And because she was young and hopeful and in love and  _stupid_ a lot of people died.”

Kylo blinks at that. “I… didn’t know her.”

“Obviously. She died well before you were born.”

He watches her, and feels it. “And you’re trying to see if I’m similarly young, and hopeful, and in love, and stupid?”

“Just stupid. You’re already older than she was when she died. You’re obviously in love. And I get the sense you’re simultaneously hopeful and wary.”

Kylo’s not sure what to do with that. Finally he asks, “She was a senator. The books say she was a good queen. What do you mean by stupid? Obviously she wasn’t slow or low on book learning.”

Mirina inclines her head, and nods. “Decent question. The galaxy was shifting around her. She was being nudged into place to take advantage of those shifts. She and her Skywalker should have been the Emperor’s heirs apparent. She knew it was coming. She  _had_  to know it was coming. She was sleeping with Skywalker, pregnant with his children, and he was the Emperor’s enforcer, and yet, when the blow fell, she got weak and silly, and… Everything fell apart, and what should have been an easy shift from one regime to another fell apart in a wash of dead bodies and ruined hopes.”

“Are you asking if I’m weak and silly?”

She keeps staring. “I’m certainly trying to figure it out.”

He raises an eyebrow, and is saved from having to immediately respond by C8 entering with his lunch and her tea.

Once it’s served, he does thank C8, and, having a bite of his lunch, is able to put his thoughts, and hers together.

“You said you knew her.”

“Yes.”

“Did she seem… of two minds? Like, say, completely on board with where you wanted her to go when Anakin was near, and rather reticent about it when he was away?”

 

 

Mirina thinks, sips her tea, nibbles a cookie, and thinks. “Possibly. It’s been so long, I don’t exactly remember the time frame, but… Yes, there were times when it felt like everything was just going to slide into place, and then there were times where she was unreasonably bubbling about Obi Wan, and… Well, pregnant women aren’t exactly known for iron-clad emotional control, let alone young ones.”

He nods. “She was being mind-controlled by Skywalker. It wasn’t intentional. He wasn’t doing it on purpose. But he wanted her, and she didn’t want him, and as long as he stayed close, she was warm, and happy, and pliant, and when he wandered off, or she did, her own mind came into play. You couldn’t make whatever your plans were work, because you weren’t actually dealing with Padme Amidala. You were dealing with a reflection of Skywalker who looked like her, part of the time, and her own self, the other part. And apparently, her own self was not fond of the future he was attempting to build for them.”

Mirina nods, slowly. That’s the piece of the puzzle they were missing. “Ah.”

“Does  _stupid_  make more sense now?”

“Actually, yes.”

He stares at her, eyes hot. “Whatever else may be true about me, I’m not that flavor of stupid.”

“No… I’d think not.” Again, she’s watching him. Sipping her tea, eyes on his. Finally, after a long, quiet moment she says, “I lost my husband to the service of one Emperor.” She rubs her lips together. “I cared for him very deeply. Maybe not… the great passionate love you and your Rey seem to have. But we were well-matched, enjoyed each other, and had similar goals.

“I lost my place, and purpose in the service of one Emperor. Jon doesn’t know what all I did for the Empire, and he doesn’t need to. You don’t, either. Suffice it to say, pretty gowns are not the beginning or end of what I’ve done.”

Kylo nods. Given how readily she and Ellie Kinear got together, he was certain there had to be more there that two old ladies of similar tastes.

“Since the fall of the Empire, I’ve kept my family together, alive, and thriving. Very few Imperials can say that. And my guess is if your Mum had had any idea of who I was or what I’d done, I’d be dead or off in some Republican prison somewhere,  _still_.

“I say this because I’m  _not_  going through this again. I’m not building up a system to watch some willy-nilly twit throw it all away for a moment of stupid, blind love. If Skywalker had done his job… If he’d kept his Padme in check… By the time Palpatine was a problem, he would have killed him, and taken the throne with her, and the Empire would have gone forth, growing stronger and better with each passing year.

“Instead, Skywalker was weak. He got himself tangled in some mess with Padme and Obi Wan, and all but died for it. He let the Emperor go insane and start blowing up planets for kicks. No one was better off with Alderaan gone. The Rebellion was barely a blip on the scanners before he blew up Alderaan. Sore losers who wouldn’t accept the results of a binding election gained hold of the moral high ground overnight because genocide changes everything.

“I know you know these things happened, I don’t know what you’ve learned from them.”

Kylo licks his lips. “You mean… what sort of political philosophy I’ve gleaned from… being the heir of Vader and the Rebellion?”

“To start.”

He thinks for another long moment before saying, “I’m not my grandfather, either of them. I’m not my father, or my mother. One of my grandmothers is… the archetype for pacifistic just governance, I guess. The other got caught by the Force in a terrible bargain. And though I am made of those people, I am none of them.

“Snoke sought me out before I was born, hoping for his own Vader. One who wouldn’t be turned by affection at the wrong moment. He talked to me about Vader. How he’d been… almost perfect in his service to the Emperor.

“He also thought Vader was weak. He thought I was weak, too. He did everything he could to burn any speck of affection I had for any living person out of me.

“He failed. My weakness cut his strength in half and stole his empire from him, so… take that as you will.

“My whole life, previous to two years ago, was spent either trying to live up to, or deal with, a series of legacies. I was supposed to be… the… Everything… of the Rebellion. The start of a New Jedi to go with my mother’s New Republic. I was supposed to be Vader reborn. I was supposed to be a lot of fucking shit.

“There’s no  _supposed to_. There just  _is._ ” He untucks the Maji pendant from under his tunic. “That’s part of why I wear this.

“I was supposed to be some sort of crowning glory of a lot of different pasts. All merging together into this one spot, one life, and… Fuck that. I am. Here and now. And the Order… that’s the promise of more here and now. The past won’t die. It doesn’t just go away. But it doesn’t have to dominate your present and future, either.

“So, that’s it. No high or lofty goals. Palpatine… I don’t know what he wanted before he went insane, but from what I can tell, after, he wanted absolute power. Snoke did, too. The idea of it bores me to tears. I’ll run this thing as well as I can, for as long as I can, and maybe one day Rey and I’ll head off into the sunset, raise our family, and just train Maji. Maybe one day they’ll vote me out, and like my Mom I’ll annoy the hell out of them reminding them of what they could have had. I don’t know. I do know I’m not in this to be a God-King. I might be a good king. I hope. I’d be a terrible god.”

Mirina’s voice and eyes are cold as she says, “If you’re just playing at this, being a political dilettante, it’s not worth risking my son over.”

Kylo would also prefer Jon didn’t die for this. That said he’s also sure that if he, personally, has to keep this going in perpetuity, a  _lot_ of people are going to die. “If I’m not building something that can survive without me, you will lose your son for it, because no one, not even Snoke, lived forever. If there’s any chance of this working, it cannot be dependent on me, or my family, or any one person. It’s got to be self-sustaining, without the right personality at the head of it.”

Mirina inclines her head slightly at that. “The Old Republic lasted a thousand years.”

“So, I’ve been told. You remember it, don’t you?”

“I was twenty-four when it fell.”

Kylo blinks. She’s older than he expected, given that Jon is his age.

“Jon was something of a late surprise. Tasha’s twenty years older than he is.”

“Ah.”

“Supposedly, your mother was trying to get it back.”

“I’ve heard that, too. Given that she abandoned the New Republic, I’m skeptical that she was much of any sort of Republican. I think she knew where she wanted the universe to go, and did her best to get it there, but the mechanics didn’t matter much.”

“Do you know where you want the universe to go?”

Kylo shrugs a bit. “I know where I want to go. I know who I want to take with me. Everyone else can join in as they see fit, or not.”

“You’re building a republic.”

He shrugs that off. As he does so, he gets the feel for more policy… or more why he doesn’t have much in the way of ‘policy.’ It’s not about  _him._ “I’m building a senate. If this is going to outlast me, something has to attach people to this. Something beyond my personality or my power. They’ve got to have a stake in it, so… This is it. Citizenship, a voice, the ability to help set the course. It’s not a republic because republics are inherently good or perfect or whatever. It’s a way to make the Order something important to the people it belongs to. It’s a way to build identity and purpose. Again, it’s a way to keep this going past me.”

She’s watching him like the Urus again, shifting her understanding of him. “The unwilling prince.”

He shrugs. “I like being anonymous. That’s not a secret. I like quiet. Also not a secret. I like spending time with people who genuinely like me. I understand that’s not a rare phenomenon, either. So, yes, I’m building, or trying to build, something that I may be able to step away from at some point. We’ll do this as long as we need to, but… yes, at some point I’d like Rey and I to be able to retire from this. To just be ourselves.”

She nods at that, too. “And my son? What happens to him when you retire?”

“Assuming I get to leave voluntarily, he’ll either be well-enough off and well-enough situated to make a place for himself wherever he likes. Or whoever replaces me, which I suppose could be him if he’s so inclined, may find what he can do valuable.”

It’s  _which could be him_  that lights up Mirina’s eyes.

And suddenly, Kylo realizes he’s got a firm backer, and that Mirina Frakes will go to the ends of the galaxy to make sure he’s well-situated and secure. Because if he does get to give up his power voluntarily, and if there is an election for a future Master of the Order, Grand Marshal Jon Frakes, former right hand of the previous Master, would likely be in a very good place to win said election.

It’s after she’s left, that he’s wondering what Jon’s going to think about this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I've been waiting months to get this chapter out. It's the payoff/reveal of SO MANY little bits I've had dangling through this story.
> 
> So, for those of you keeping score at home...
> 
> A: Who's thought Jon's career track looks a bit... uh... off? Wedding dresses to armor? Those are not congruous skills.
> 
> B: Who thought: You know Pat's really, stupidly excited for this guy who's the son of some random logistical officer to buddy up to Kylo?
> 
> C: Jon would rather people talk about him working his ass off, rather than working it on people... There's got to be some history there, right? And yes, next chapter we're going to get more about Jon and Lane and whatnot. That said, Jon really is flipping excellent at his job, but excellent at your job, pretty, and sexually flexible go a hell of a lot further than just excellent at your job.
> 
> D: Mirina Frakes saying that with Ellie Kinear in the group that they might actually pull this off... Wait, why does she think that?
> 
> E: Ellie and Pat Kinear knowing a stupidly detailed account of the Amidala/Skywalker story.
> 
> And here's where we finally get all of those bits and pieces into one spot. And, of course, the ladies are just fun to write. 
> 
> Okay, more goodies next week.


	6. The Blueprint of the Court of Ren (Frakes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably fairly standard knowledge these days, but on the off chance it's not: FUBAR=Fucked up beyond all recognition.

1/11/2

Emperor… Master… Frakes…

Well, Mirina Frakes certainly doesn’t mind that idea.

Not at all.

And, if Kylo and his Rey aren’t ready for the big time, they are likely good enough to put things in place for someone who is ready, who understands how to play the game, and then, once in position with a good, solid, secure platform, to go forth and really  _rule_.

And, of course, getting these things started is always rocky and difficult, so if someone… expendable… someone not her personal son, were to do the hard work, pave the path, and then, graciously, step aside…

Well… That’s likely worth some time and effort.

 

* * *

The  _Supremacy_ is, without a doubt, the single ugliest ship Mirina’s ever seen.

She, personally, has access to the I-Deck, where her current, adequate, but not spectacular, apartment is; the F-Deck, where the officers live and play; the C, D, and E-Decks, enlisted-land; the main flight deck; and apparently, whomever was in charge of setting up her access chit, didn’t realize that post-party, she could still get into a lift, punch in Kylo’s not-a-throne-room, and have the elevator deliver her to his personal area.

(Obviously,  _that_  has to change. Not for her, personally, but for everyone else who is still lingering on the I-Deck. Mostly hangers-on who have decided life aboard the  _Supremacy_ is fairly comfortable. And, it is. Just not as luxurious as home.)

The I-Deck and F-Deck are likely supposed to be the best, most comfortable, most posh part of the  _Supremacy_  and they’re mostly just klick after klick of sterile looking black and gray steel and transteel corridors… The canteens are… adequate. Comfortable places to gather together and chat in private, outside of one’s personal rooms are… non-existent outside of the market zones. Though there does appear to be enough traffic in the markets zones to cover pretty much any sort of discreet activity.

It’s a battleship. And, as battleships generally are, it was designed to be a battleship, and it looks it.

She should probably be glad there are market zones. Though… They’re  _fine._ In a middle-class, plebeian sort of way.

If people are going to set foot on the  _Supremacy_ and feel like they’ve entered the Court of Frakes, the jewel of a city in a crown of sparkling beauty, elegance, and power…

She sighs. This is going to be an uphill battle.

First and foremost. People have to be able to move. Nothing else happens if that doesn’t, so… Mirina heads off to scout her battleground. After all, a good general doesn’t go into a fight blind, so she shouldn’t, either.

 

* * *

Transportation on the  _Supremacy_ is appalling.

Up and down, between decks is fine. There are single floor elevators every hundred and fifty meters, and express elevators, that stop ever ten floors every three hundred meters, and five super express elevators that stop every twenty five floors. So, up and down is slick and easy.

As she strolls the market areas, and chats with officers, she finds that living quarters on the  _Supremacy_  are intentionally designed to go through the entirety of the horizontal space of the ship, so that anyone can quickly, by going up or down, get to their station.

So, obviously, up and down transport is ready, willing, and able to do the job.

But from one section in a deck to another section in the same deck… There are trams on C, D, E, and F-Decks. The trams go at a swift running speed, so they’re an improvement over walking, but they stop to pick up and drop off more people every half klick, so it takes her more than five hours to go from one end of the F-Deck to the other.

The rest of the  _Supremacy_ is set with the idea that if you’re on a working deck, you’ll be within 150 meters of wherever you’re supposed to be, so there’s no need for any sort of horizontal transport at a higher than walking speed. Outsiders aren’t supposed to be strolling about, or running about, or even standing about, on those decks.

And… She sighs. While it is true that the F-Deck has what is likely the height of comfort, for the  _Supremacy,_  it’s primarily utilitarian. There’s no sense of style or elegance. The market sections are like mid-range markets everywhere. Goods are plentiful, not cheap, but not expensive, either, and anyone can just walk in and buy whatever they want.

If any part of the  _Supremacy_ is exclusive, or designed to make people feel like they’re some sort of elite, she can’t find it. (Of course, she also hasn’t attempted to get onto the F-Deck with an enlisted ID. Had she done that, she’d recognize that there is at least one level of  _elite_  on the  _Supremacy._ )

She sighs at that.

Beggars can’t be choosers, and unfortunately, when the dust settled, and all was said and done, people like her didn’t have a lot of choices.

And, strolling through the market section closest to her son’s rooms, getting ready to have dinner with him, this is what she’s got. No one else is coming within light years of offering this sort of option to her son, so…

Take the choice, see what she can do with it, or not…

She thinks about it, looking around, and knows it’s not really a choice. Ellie pointed it out. She made her choice years ago, now she just has to keep going on.

 

* * *

The first year after the fall of the Empire was, without a doubt, or any exaggeration, the absolute worst of Mirina Frakes’ life.

Having had four babies in the first seven years of her marriage, she was  _done with babies,_ and firmly convinced (and relieved) that menopause had finally hit when she began missing cycles with Jon. And, part of being  _done with babies_  was that babies, with their needs, lack of sleep, hormonal disturbances, and all the rest of it, ran her ragged during their first year.

At least, that’s the polite way of putting it. “Poor dear’s having a hard time of it.” That’s what her friends or mother would say. The medical term is postpartum depression, and every time, she got it, bad. But, eventually, they’d find the right meds, and eventually things would even out, and eventually, it would get better.

But four times were enough.

Until it became apparent it would be five.

Jonathon William Frakes showed up late enough in his parents’ life that, when his father announced he had another one on the way, a lot of his friends chuckled and made comments about miracles and the old shaft not being quite dead yet.

He also showed up six weeks before the Battle of Endor.

So, it was, with a newborn on the breast, in the midst of wracking postpartum depression, made worse by the fact that as soon as the pregnancy hormones cleared, menopause was indeed bearing down full-force on Mirina Frakes, that she got word that the second Death Star, her husband’s command, had been destroyed by the Rebels.

She didn’t scream when she got the news, because she’d been through it once before. He’d been stationed on the First Death Star, too.

But… the first time… He called home. Before he even checked in with what was left with his command. As soon as the news went live that the First Death Star had gone, as soon as he knew it had happened, he called home. (He was actually the one who told her it was gone. He’d gotten the news before she did.)

A week later, when he still hadn’t called home, that’s when she started to scream.

Mirina doesn’t really remember too much of that year. And she’s honestly grateful for both that, and that Tasha, who was twenty at the time, was old enough, and bright enough, and resourceful enough to take over.

She spent most of the second and third year in a panic. A very quiet, calm-looking panic. The show had to go on. Clients had to be met. Life had to continue. Never let it be said the Frakes women can’t be internally screaming and externally smiling, making small talk, and looking for all the world like nothing more pressing then the choice of dove gray velvet or eggshell silk were in order.

But the Concordance was signed, and the trials were beginning and friends and foes and allies and enemies were singing their songs, making deals with the New Republic, turning in everyone they knew in the Empire to save themselves, and every night she went to bed, terrified that before morning, some heavily-armed, bright young things from the New Republic were going to show up to arrest her and her daughters.

When Pat Kinear went up on trial, she almost ran.  _Almost._ Sheer grit, and the fact that the New Republic either were just too damn egalitarian to understand that there were spheres of power where men just didn’t go, or they were too damn amateur to know that the army and navy were just the tip of the Empire, she never learned. What she did learn, slowly, over time, is that the New Republic was too… good… or… moral… or… whatever to drag the officers’ wives in for questioning.

Which meant, eventually, five years on, when the trials ended, her name hadn’t been dragged into it.

And she was, officially, in the clear.

And she was, unofficially, looking to hit back at the New Republic as hard as she could.

 

* * *

Ten percent of her contacts were executed for war crimes. Anyone who could have been plausibly connected to the genocide of Alderaan, meaning pretty much every surviving officer of the First Death Star, was executed. Supposedly, if you were playing by the rules, having heard the order to murder a peaceful, unarmed, teaming with Rebels, because they wanted to be on a peaceful, unarmed, perfect moral victory target should anyone ever strike against them, you would have mutinied.

Apparently, Death Star, was foreshadowing for anyone on it.

Fifty percent of her contacts were in prison. Useless. (For the next ten to twenty-five years. As they got out, some of them discreetly visited their old friends. Or had their children and grandchildren visit. By the time the Resistance was up and resisting, most of Mirina’s old friends were out and about again, and a lot of them knew where to go to get back at the people who put them in prison for following the legal orders of a legitimately elected government.)

Another thirty percent had gone renegade. Possible, but dangerous. The bounties the New Republic had on any of the Empire’s rogue commanders were sky high, and any hint that you could get in contact with one of them would get you a  _lot_ more attention than she wanted. She did put her feelers out for Admiral Schiff, who, at that point had a small but growing armada of his own, but he’d taken Thea with him when he went rogue, so her contact on his staff was with him.

The last ten percent made it through the trials, and either by dint of clever bribes and lies, or even more clever service records, came out the other side “free men.” They didn’t tend to stick around.

The Kinears just vanished one day. They had been on Coruscant since Pat was released, found not guilty of war crimes. She noticed with scorn that he kept trying to get the New Republic to arm itself, and defend the far edges of their territory, and to do  _something_ to make it worth the while of the rogue Admirals to come in. Better an easy peace than an unending war.

But they just nodded and ignored him.

And then one day he, Ellie, and the entire clan, was gone.

Rumor had it they (and the others who avoided prison) were heading to the Rim. Rumor had it, there was work for men, and women, who had certain skills, out there. Work the Republic wouldn’t let them get near.

 _Not_  the kind of work she could do from out there.

Slowly, Mirina’s brand began to grow again, as she began to make  _friends_ in the right sorts of places, and slowly she began to notice who thrived when the New Republic was stagnant and chaotic. She made sure they got useful information.

And when those rumors of the Rim, and the Unknown Regions began to coalesce, when they moved past vague hearsay… Well, she knew what sort of information that new power would need. She just needed to find a way to get it there.

 

* * *

Apparently, the power on the edge of the galaxy remembered her, and when Karoline Schiff, the Admiral’s granddaughter, needed a wedding dress, she had a very easy time getting an appointment with Lady Frakes.

And if it took an abnormally large number of fittings… Well, some brides are picky.

And if, over the next twenty years, a collection of somewhat less well known-women had an unusually easy time getting appointments with the House of Frakes, well… Tasha and the older girls knew not to ask, or, as time went by, got in on the game themselves, and Jon, a child and then teen, was too oblivious to have a clue as to what was going on.

And after twenty-five years, the First Order was no longer a ghost hiding in the shadows, and Mirina was, after the correct assurances had been offered, relieved to send her son to them. Hoping he’d take after his father.

Though, unlike her hopes of the First Order bringing about a new Empire, or at least wiping the New Republic off the galaxy, or if not even that, then at least killing the bastards who got her husband, Jon taking after Bill was rather a long shot.

Still, looking around the  _Supremacy,_  if she’d realized how far away from the Empire this was, she might have thought twice about offering Jon up to it.

That said… She’s strolling around the F-Deck, noticing how empty large sections of it are. There’s room here. And… opportunity. Enough money, the right people… This… could be something.

Something her son could rule.

The House of Frakes could move from the shadows to the center stage, and she wouldn’t mind that, at all.

 

* * *

1/12/2

It has not escaped Jon’s notice that his mother is  _still_  here on the  _Supremacy._

It’s not like she’s underfoot every moment. In fact, several days go by at a time without him seeing her, but… And it’s not like she’s begging him to leave, though her comments about lovely planets with wealthy people and permissive mores being an excellent place to set another branch of the House of Frakes aren’t exactly flying under his scanners.

But she could do that from Coruscant. So, he doesn’t know what’s going on, and that makes him uncomfortable.

He supposes she might be lingering, hoping to get him to change his mind. Her skills at getting people to bend to her will have always been better in person, but… Well, it has been a long time since they’ve lived together, and he supposes it’s possible that she just doesn’t understand that he’s not going to change his mind because she’s upset.

(Granted, how she could have missed that, what with the fact that she was very clearly indicating over and over that she was constantly upset with him and his behavior as a teen/young adult, and he changed bugger all for her then, is a mystery, but… again… it’s been almost a decade since they’ve lived together, some memories may have dimmed down over time.)

She’s asked to have dinner with him, and… well, he’s glad she asked, because he’s busy, and she generally more tells than asks, so… That’s probably moving things in the right direction.

He can pry an hour or two free to have a meal with his mother.

 

* * *

She shows up one minute early.

She’s  _always_  one minute early.

Jon lets her in, and she smiles up at him. “It smells good.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so it’s just a chop, potato, and veg.”

“I like all of those things.” She sees the plates on the table. “Did you cook?” She can’t keep the disbelief out of her voice.

Jon sniggers. “Uh. No. I’ve developed many new skills since I lived with you, that not among them. But, as you always say, rank has its privileges, one of which is that if I want food, food comes to me.”

She nods, and appears to be taking note of that. “Indeed.”

They settle down, and he pours glasses of wine for both of them. For a moment, they both drink, and it’s… a moment. It’s… not uncomfortable, but Jon’s decidedly unsettled.

Finally, when he’s just about to say, “Okay, what’s up and why are you still here?” Mirina says to him, “So, what… or where… on the  _Supremacy_  would be considered a fashionable neighborhood?”

Jon blinks at her, squints, takes a long sip of wine, and then blinks again. “Mom?”

“A  _good_ neighborhood. A place where one might open an elite shop, and set a good flat.”

Jon blinks again. Then he takes a much bigger sip of his wine. “Mom… are you… thinking about moving in?”

“Yes.” Jon is very pleased that he doesn’t whimper at that. “The House of Frakes has always been at the center of power in the galaxy, and… well, that appears to be here, now. So…”

“But… What about home?”

She waves that off. “Tasha has that well in hand. There’s nothing going on there that she can’t take care of.”

He pours himself more wine, and gulps it.

Mirina readies a tidy bite of her chop, balancing it neatly on the tines of her fork, looking for all the world like she’s patiently awaiting his response as to where the ‘desirable’ neighborhoods on the  _Supremacy_ are.

After another moment, Jon says, “I… didn’t think you wanted anything to do with… Kylo.”

“I don’t. But, as you said, the only way to get to better is forward, and… If better is where we’re going then,” she gestures. “So, where would one set up shop?

Jon sighs. He stabs a bite of his potato, and gets to eating. “Mom, it’s a battleship. It doesn’t have  _neighborhoods._ ”

She arches an eyebrow at him, and he can feel she can’t believe he’s going to even attempt that with her.

“Fine. It doesn’t have the kind of neighborhoods you want. This is it, as posh as it gets. Officer-land. And we’re sprinkled through here to try and keep us close to our commands, so, for example, I’ve got an ensign two doors down, and a major across the hall.” He doesn’t need to point out that this was Lane’s flat originally, and he was a major, or how even though he’s jumped several ranks, and will jump several more, he hasn’t moved, nor does he intend to.

“Where do the generals live?”

“Most of them have their own command ships. I think… Actually, I don’t know. Kinear’s the top of the heap general-wise right. He has rooms here, but I don’t think he lives in them. I assume there has to be someone in command of the troops on the  _Supremacy,_ and I assume that general would actually live here, but…”

Mirina nods. This is the sort of thing that the Master of the Order’s Diplomatic Department should know, but it’s also true that one doesn’t, generally, go from tactical design into diplomacy, and Jon’s got more than a bit of studying left to do. “And the section I’m in is where you put the well-off guests for the First Year celebrations?”

“Yes. C, D, and E-Deck is enlisted housing and entertainment. F-Deck is officer housing and entertainment. You’re on I-Deck, along with the suites we’re putting guests in. I suppose if there’s going to be a ‘posh’ section of the  _Supremacy,_ it will eventually be the I-Deck, but right now it’s pretty empty.”

Meaning, as best he knows, Mirina, and three dozen other guests who have, for whatever reason, and he should likely ask if Artoo might be interested in finding out what those reasons might be, haven’t left since the First Year party, are the only people on the I-Deck.

Mirina nods at that. “It is. But it doesn’t have to be. Did I hear a rumor of potential embassies on this ship?”

Jon looks at her curiously. “If you did, I haven’t.” He thinks about it. They probably should have embassies here. Probably should see about sticking embassies on other worlds, too. But, right now, he’s painfully short of people to put in them. He rubs his head. He needs a C8 or Threepio of his own, and then about fifty humans to start overseeing things like embassies and posh neighborhoods and… Well, shit, if they’re doing this, they should really have some sort of bloody market or something. Something people could come here to trade at. Not like they don’t have room, or the ability to provide security for a merchant who’s looking to move goods. “But if we could…”

“I’ve heard that you’ve talked with Kylo about building a palace here. It’s too big to be a palace. But it’s just right to be a capitol city. How long is I-Deck?”

Two weeks. She’s been here two weeks and already is more hooked into the rumor network than he is. Jon sighs. “Fifty-five, maybe fifty-eight klicks across. More than two and a half wide at the widest point.”

“Many cities are smaller than that, and that’s just one floor here.”

“True,” he takes a bite of his chop and works on thinking through the angles his mom is talking about cornering. Well, first and foremost, posh neighborhoods and people might be a goal, but they aren’t anything approaching reality at this point.  “Mom… Not to put too fine a point on it, but… Uh… If you open up a branch of the House of Frakes here, who, exactly, do you think will be wearing your goods? The kind of people who are generally your clients… They aren’t here.” And given what happened to the board of directors of the Raclan bank, they’re likely to be  _wary_ about coming here.

“We’ll start with Lady Ren, and go from there.”

“Does she know that?” Jon’s fairly sure that if he hits Kylo with it right, mostly by just telling him it’s a good idea,  _Kylo_  will let him dress him up and arrange most of the stuff around him to suit Jon’s idea of what they need and how it needs to look. He’s fairly sure that Rey will  _not_ be nearly so easy about this.

“She will.” Mirina smiles. That smile doesn’t make Jon shiver, but there is something cold about it. “My own rooms. They’re adequate, but I’d like to see about shifting them some. The entertaining space is too small, and preferably they’d be within a short walk of the shop. Likewise… transportation within the  _Supremacy_ is appalling. It takes forever to get from one side to the other. If someone were to visit, they could get here from any corner of the galaxy in hours, and then spend hours getting from the landing bays to the I-Deck.”

“Uh… Yes, I’m sure.” Traffic… That’s a million levels beyond his training, and well below his pay grade. “Mom… uh…” Jon shakes his head. He’s in charge of Tactical Design. He’s unofficially, one of the top four people in the Order. Finding someone in physical plant to set up a shop for his Mom would probably take him ten minutes. Except, of course, if he does that, she’s not going to  _leave._

“I won’t be underfoot, Jon.”

He eyes her a little. She’s always had an unsettling habit of responding to things he hasn’t actually said out loud.

“Now, once we’ve got my space set, I have a feeling we’re going to need more flats along those lines. You should likely move up, too.”

“I swear you just said something about not being underfoot.”

“Jonathon… You know how this works. Important people like to congregate together. It’s likely a good plan the Master doesn’t end up there. Making sure he’s elsewhere helps to cement his image as apart and above everyone else, but putting more of  _us_  in that area will encourage others to move up, too, and next thing you know, you do have a neighborhood were power concentrates.”

Jon sighs. The only way they’re taking him out of this apartment is in a box, and she should know better than to even suggest it. “Maybe you’d prefer to have a chat with a few of those generals. Get them to set their own rooms here instead of their command ships.”

“Oh, love, I certainly intend to. Well, their wives, at least. I have a feeling more than a few of them will understand what’s being done here.”

For a good tenth of a second, Jon almost thinks of suggesting his Mom and Threepio have a chat, but he jettisons that idea, fast. After all, if the son of Leia Organa is a sticking point, her personal protocol droid, is likely to be an issue, too.

That said, if anyone would be good with the idea of setting up some sort of… posh space… that’d be Threepio. He rubs his eyes, and reaches over, grabbing one of his data pads, and makes a note to set up another meeting with the droid, so they can go over this. Hell, if they ever manage to get Kylo’s senate into play, they’ll need a nice place, likely with attractive rooms, to put them… I-Deck could be where the senate lives. He mentally sniggers at the idea of sticking his Mom in the middle of the Senate.

Mirina waits for him to do that, glares at him for a second, and then says, “Now, tell me about your plans for his throne room.”

“It’s  _not_  a throne room.”

“Yes, I had noticed that. There is a conspicuous lack of throne there, which simply  _won’t do_.”

“Yeah, well, that’s on the non-negotiable list, so…”

She waits for a moment, “So…”

He shrugs. “What’s got you thinking about this?” He’s pleased to see she’s not trying to pull him away from Ren, but… This complete reversal, followed by her fully throwing in with The Order is making warning signs dance in his head.

“I talked with Ellie yesterday.”

“Meeting up with old friends?”

“Something like that. She tells me you’ve got a reputation for being good at this, so…”

Jon snorts. He knows the sorts of things people say about him. He would prefer they talked about him being good at his job, but he knows they don’t. “I’ve got a reputation for fucking anything that moves.”

“Language…”

“Mom, I’m thirty-three and in my own home, I’ll say fuck as often as I like. When I’m in your home, I’ll censor myself.”

Mirina rolls her eyes a bit. “Fine.”

“And, best of my knowledge, they don’t talk about my job much, other than a bit of speculation as to if Kylo’s one of the moving things I’m fucking.”

Mirina doesn’t glare, but her glance does have a  _lot_ of edges to it. He understands her look as  _you brought that on yourself._ “Yes, well, that does tend to happen when you marry the man who promoted you all the way from ensign to captain in one move, and then proceed to deal with your grief at his loss by attempting to fornicate it away. Which does not work, by the way.”

Jon shrugs, ignores her last comment, and says, “I am good at my job. Lane recognized it.”

“And given he wasn’t summarily executed for how he took care of your old supervisor, I’m going to assume he was right.”

Jon shrugs at that, too. It would have been nice if that was true, but… “Honestly, given how things used to be run here, Lane could have been dead wrong and no one would have cared. Smanth called him incompetent, told everyone he was playing favorites, thinking with his shaft, and promoted me to get into my bed. And then he jumped the line and complained about it to Lane’s commanding officer. Even if he’d been right, that was insubordination, and Lane, as Smanth’s commanding officer, had every right to handle it, so handle it he did. With the way things are run now, I have a feeling executing an underling for inappropriate comments would have gotten Lane more than a raised eyebrow and three hours of extra paperwork.”

“Is that an improvement?”

Jon’s a bit irked that she even has to ask, but… She’s  _Empire._ “I’d like to think so. The more I think on it… The less comfortable I am with people having total power over the people under them. It’s… too much begging for trouble.” It’s clear he’s thinking about how some of his very favorite people have used absolute power over the years, what he went along with when they had it, and… These days it’s starting to chafe.

Mirina doesn’t look terribly convinced by that, but she also doesn’t appear to want to argue with him. She’ll admit at first she didn’t have much use for Lane. She sent Jon off in a last ditch attempt to get him to behave in something approaching tolerable manners and mores, and two years later, he came back with the news that he was getting married, which she approved of greatly, until she understood  _Jon_ was the bride.

Then she took one look at Lane, and  _knew_ what he was doing. Men get to a certain age, and a certain level of career responsibility, and they decide they want something young and pretty to warm their bed and keep them company. That’s part of what her parents were looking for when they introduced her to Bill. Part of what she was looking for in a few of her daughters’ suitors.

Major Lane Keenadun, who was forty-three (to Jon’s twenty-seven) had hit  _a certain age._

 

__

 

As son-in-laws went, it’s not like Lane was horrible, or even mildly problematic. Most of her other son-in-laws took to him right off the bat. Senith, Tasha’s husband, the closest thing Jon has to a father, genuinely liked him and told her to get over herself and stop being a twit about Lane being a man… but…

Still… This  _was not_  what she’d been hoping for when she sent Jon to the First Order.

Then the night before the wedding, when a few of Jon’s friends had been drinking, and explained to her, in gory detail, what Lane had done to the man who dared to complain to the General in charge of Physical Logistics that her boy had fucked his way into his Captain’s stripe.

And, as Jon had just put it, Lane  _handled_  that complaint, and the man who made it.

And  _that_ vastly improved her opinion of Lane. Yes, he was still the wrong shape and sex for her son, but he at least understood a husband’s job, and had been willing to do it properly… And, of course, he was willing to  _marry_ Jon, instead of keep him as a dirty little secret. After all, this sort of relationship was technically illegal in the Empire, but discreet buggery was never (assuming the people involved did their jobs right, were publicly seen with or married to women, and were appropriately pro-Empire) punished.

By their second anniversary, she was willing to admit that Lane was a pretty good son-in-law.

He told her once, with a grin, that she’d learn to love him. And damned if the bastard hadn’t been right.

She cried, hard and ugly, for him at his funeral.

Right here, right now, and thinking of Lane, she’d also admit that she sees  _no_ issue with a commanding officer having that sort of power. That’s the  _point_ of being a commanding officer. (And the point of being very good friends with them.) But, in that she’s trying to get to some sort of… detente… with Jon, so she can move on toward getting the Court of Ren into a place where it can become the Court of Frakes, she lets it lie.

“So,” she redirects. “Tell me about the  _not_ a throne room. And where you think the  _Supremacy_  is supposed to go if we’re building a palace.”

Jon doesn’t raise an eyebrow at  _we’re._ He wants to, but… “Well, first and foremost, there’s the guy I’m building it for, and what he wants.”

Mirina dismissively waves that away. “If you package it right, he’ll go for anything you say. There are a lot of issues I wouldn’t push that man on, how anything around him looks isn’t among them. He’s giving you the power, so manage him.”

“He’s not a condition, Mom. I’m not managing him.”

“I know, he’s a  _client,_ who is hiring your expertise, because he knows he doesn’t know what he needs, so  _do your job._ ”

Jon exhales, gets up, and crosses his living area to his drafting table, and returns with the best of the sketches he’s worked out.

“Color palette for the hard surfaces is black, white, a collection of grays and silvers. Sharp lines, hard angles, stark and clean.”

“The colors and aesthetic of the Order.”

“Right. But we’re not just the Order. The Maji’s going to be worked into this at some point.”

“And the Maji is…”

He half inclines his head. “We don’t exactly have a look for that yet. Colors, fluid, soft. Balance. We’re working on themes of balance.”

He lays the sketch down. The shell of Kylo’s not-a-throne-room is structurally unchanged. He’s kept the support pillars black. The walls and floor are now light gray. A twining path in black is picked out along the floor. Planters of silver and white marble, veined through with soft grays and blacks are filled with plants and flowers in all colors and sizes. Between and among the flowers are black reflecting pools. Swimming about in said pools are bright aquatics, fish, like Jon’s, and also water plants.

“This is the one I’m liking best of the bunch.”

“A garden?”

“What’s more rare and costly in space? I’d plant trees in there if I could figure out how to keep the roots happy. We’ve got the hard surfaces in the Order colors. The plants are alive and vibrant, so those are Maji themes, and we balance the starkness of space,” he hasn’t enclosed the two open walls of Kylo’s not-a-throne-room, so there’s still the view of a billion lightyears of space all around them, “with a lot of soft, living things.”

Mirina’s nodding along. She doesn’t dare lay a mark on the sketch but she does point to the center of the garden. “A pergola, or gazeebo here. Detailed, filigree work. Metal, black, hard and straight supports with clean arches, in between with lines will curve and twine, put them in silver or white. Soft seating, pillows in a lot of colors. If we’re feeling really lush, perhaps chaises. Some place for the Master to sit in comfort, and entertain chosen guests.”

Jon nods, and puts a note for that. “More seating all over. Benches…” He adds another note. “Maybe… Water walls, between some of the pillars, create a few somewhat secluded nooks.”

“Wired for sound?”

“And visuals,” he makes a mental note to point out to Kylo that if they build these things that they’re not his personal pleasure garden, so not to go fucking about in them unless he wants the Order’s security and spy network to get an eyeful.

Mirina is nodding, seeing the image in her mind. “A proper courtyard. You might want some tame animals, beyond the fish. Something cute and fluffy. People like having soft and friendly animals to play with. It puts them at ease.”

He half shrugs. “I suppose so.” Granted, soft, fluffy tame animals need to be cleaned up after, and that’s something they likely don’t need in the not-a-throne-room. “Now ask me how I’m going to pay for it.”

“Ah… Yes. Well, that’s always going to be an issue.” She taps the sketch. “But right now we’re dreaming, so we might as well dream.”

“Well, if we’re dreaming… This is… Temporary. We’ve got two dreadnaughts in design right now. Eventually they’ll be the palaces, and this will be the battleship.”

Mirina shakes her head. “No. They’re what… five years out?”

“Probably. Maybe four and a half if they go full speed ahead and nothing gets FUBARed between now and then.”

Mirina half-smiles. “And when has anything, ever, not gotten a bit FUBAR?”

He snerks at that. “Oh, you get to say it, but I don’t?”

“You’re a military officer on your own ship, talking about serious plans within the prevue of your command. There are appropriate places for pretty much every word, and this is certainly the place for FUBAR.”

Jon takes a bite of his potato. “Indeed. Why not temporary? This monstrosity is going to be well-nigh impossible to turn into anything approaching a palace. I don’t know if you noticed the outside when you were flying up.”

Mirina nods. She  _noticed._ “If he builds this the way he claims he’s going to you, you’re going to need every centimeter of space you can get. You may eventually move his flag ship to one of the new ones, but the  _Supremacy_  can’t just be a placeholder. You need to build this like it matters, like this is… the start of your empire.”

“It is.”

“Then treat it like that. What about the rest of the ship? You obviously don’t have the people to fill it, yet, so what are you doing with it?”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Right now, a lot of it is empty, or filled with weapons we’re not using. It’d be one thing if we were fighting, but, we aren’t, and there’s nothing quite so useless as an army at peace.”

“That’s part of why you’re trying to get those contracts.”

“Exactly, we’ve got people who are trained or in training. We’ve got more arms than anyone needs. It’d be nice to do something with them besides let them collect dust.”

“And do you have any contracts along those lines?”

Another issue in the space between dream and reality. “We’ve got people asking about them. As best I know, as of today, none of them have been finalized.”

“I understand you’re also looking to expand into the colony game.”

“Do you read my briefings when I’m not here?” Seriously, two fucking weeks. What the hell has this woman been up to?

“No dear, I  _listen_  when people talk.”

“And apparently you’ve spoken to everyone.”

She smiles.

“Yes, we’ve gotten a few of them either online or getting online.”

“And a space to finalize them, make them feel welcome and relevant, and perhaps a neighborhood for the people who are involved with them…” He can stick the representatives of their colonies next to the eventual senators. Hell, if they’re feeling really frisky, once they’ve got a senate, each colony can elect provisional members to it, or something like that.

“Yeah. I know. Last I checked we only had two finalized as of yet.”

“But you have a lot of people looking.”

“We do. More than looking for security contracts. Schiff’s in charge of most of that.” Jon sighs at that, too. Those contracts, after year five, will bring in more,  _a lot_ more, than they cost. But year one, and probably year two, is entirely sunk costs, on their part, with no pay out.

“I’ve had a few lunches with Lady Schiff, and will likely have a few more. Thea’s utterly lovely.”

“I’m sure she is.” Jon pauses at that. His eyes narrow. “Wait… How long have you known Lady Schiff?”

Mirina smiles at that, too. “Ages, dear.”

“And Ellie?”

“Since well before you, or Tasha, were born.”

He thinks about her store, and where they were, and what she did, what his father did. “Do you know the entire Imperial Officer class?”

“Oh, no.” Again, she smiles. “Just the ones who matter. And well, if they’re still around, they likely matter.”

Well, he supposes that likely explains how quickly she’s gotten into the loop here. And who the future clients of the House of Frakes,  _Supremacy_  branch will be, and who she intends to stuff into that posh neighborhood.

And he suddenly knows what his mother is trying to rebuild.

“He won’t be the Emperor for you.”

“He doesn’t have to be,” Mirina says with a smile. “In fact, I’m beginning to think we’re sincerely better off if he isn’t.”

And with that, Jon’s utterly unsure if he should be comforted or terrified.


	7. Past, Present, Future: Jon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so normally, I just toss new terms in here willy-nilly and let you figure them out from context. That said, I've got some new ones popping up in this chapter, that I figured could use some explanation out of the gate.
> 
> Okay, gay/straight/bi just feels really Earth-bound and English-language-culture intensive to me. Likewise top/bottom is just... Too entrenched in this particular culture and time and power dynamics. 
> 
> So... Narrow/'Verse (as in diverse). Narrow means you're into one (sex, gender, species, whatever) 'Verse means you like more than one of them. So, Kylo and Poe are both narrow (just for different things), Jon and Rey are 'Verse. 
> 
> Instead of top/bottom, I'm going with Give/Giver and Receive/Receiver. 
> 
> And there's your crash course in Keryl's version of Star Wars sexual-orientation slang. 
> 
> (Oh, and on the off chance that's not enough of a hint, this chapter is REALLY FUCKING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!!)

A million years ago, when Ensign Frakes was new in the Tactical Design group, he would often run into issues where the  _right_ answer was not glaringly apparent.

(He also ran into many where it was, which was generally  _not_ how Capt. Smanth wanted it done. So Jon began quietly putting his fixes into place, because he’d learned, quite well, from his mom and sisters that sometimes, you just make the changes, don’t mention them, and then sit back and relax because everything is better. A few months later, having noticed how much better things were, Major Lane Keenadun, the commanding officer in charge of Tactical Equipment, decided to see why things were getting better, and… Well… The rest was history.)

And when he would run into these complicated issues, his rather clandestine boyfriend (While it wasn’t, officially, against the rules for two officers to  _fraternize,_  given the massive difference between their ranks, the large difference between their ages, and that Lane was his commanding officer’s commanding officer such things were frowned upon.), Major Keenadun, would tell him to put it to the side, work on something else, get a night of sleep (or not sleep), and go at it fresh in the morning.

And often, some time working on something (someone) else did clear his mind and let him see what he’d been blind to before.

Right now, he could use all the help he can get. He’s not sure what his mom thinks she’s playing at. Or if she’s playing. Or if he’s better off keeping her nearby, where, theoretically at least, he can keep an eye on her. (Though, what he thinks he’s going to do with that eye is an utter mystery, because, just like she never had any luck getting him to do anything he didn’t want to do, he’s never seen her change so much as a single bead because someone else wanted it somewhere else.)

There’s a few centimeters of wine left in the bottle, so he pours it into his glass.

 

 

He can feel himself, remember himself, at his drafting table, or here, at this table, pouring over reports, staring at them, willing himself to find the answer, and feeling Lane’s hands on his shoulders, his lips on the crown of Jon’s head. “C’mon, luv. Go at it fresh in the morning.”

He’d look up and say, “Is that an order?” bright cheeky smile and bedroom eyes.

Lane would grin down at him. “You’re damn right it is! Bed, now!”

He’d salute, hop up (after tucking his work away. This was playing, yes, but the work still needed to get done.) and saunter to their bed. Laying or reclining back on it, waiting for Lane, he’d say, “Yes, sir!”

Jon swallows half of what’s in his glass, and tries, desperately, not to miss his man too much.

He makes himself not look at the photo of the two of them on the beach. It’s their honeymoon, and they’re both a bit drunk, on each other if not the rum and fruit concoctions they’d been downing, on and off, all day. Lane had asked the couple next to them on the beach to get a shot of them. They’d gotten several, but that was the only one where they both had their eyes open, and were looking vaguely in the direction of the camera.

 

 

He glances at the chrono. It’s not that late, and it’s not like the Specs ever close. He’s got the credits. Between his salary and Lane’s pension, he’s well-off, especially by Order officer standards. If he wanted to, he could certainly hire some company for the night.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Probably wouldn’t be the last, either.

He stands up and stretches, rolls his shoulders, takes another sip of his drink, thinks about Unthur, his favorite of the Specs. It’s been… Probably two months since he saw him last. He thinks about how busy he’s been lately. Maybe three.

Five hundred credits for a night. Get a massage, a decent conversation, his shaft sucked… or ridden, been a long time since he’s done that, and a good cuddle, wake up refreshed… Maybe.

He thinks about Unthar. He’s tall and light, white blonde hair, ice blue eyes, slim… As best Jon can tell, he genuinely likes him and enjoys having him as a client.  _As a client_  being the operative term. He’s sweet, and gentle, or not, as the situation calls for. (More often than not, Jon wants sweet.) He’ll cuddle Jon close and call him love and baby, pet his hair, and… It’s not real. It feels real when he’s doing it, because he’s good at his job, but…

It’s not real. Unthar’s married. To a woman. She’s a Spec, too, and one night Jon paid to work with both of them. As physical sensations go, having both of them ride him at the same time was a treat, one he certainly wouldn’t mind experiencing again. As emotional ones… Well, there’s a reason why Jon knows he’s just a pet client of Unthar’s and that’s because he’s been between Unthar and his wife.

He got to be next to the sort of love he and Lane had, and… It just made him miss it more.

So, visit Unthar, get his tool serviced, relax a bit, and then wake up sad and lonely… Definitely.

He feels listless. He wants Lane. He wants someone he can talk to about the job, and about life, and about his Mom, someone who’ll  _get_ it. He wants that conversation with diner, and kisses, and sex, fucking gods, yes, he wants it with sex, and he wants it during sex, and he wants cuddles, and he wants Lane’s shaft deep inside him while he kisses him and brushes his hair out of his eyes, and he wants… wants…  _wants._

But wanting isn’t having.

He doesn’t cry. It’s not that sort of ache anymore. Not… this version of it, at least. He’s just… flat. Empty.

He finishes the wine. It’s not helping with flat. Nothing does, not really, not for long.

And the stuff that does help… Well, it’s fucking stupid, and he knows it. Yeah, two guys and one girl at the party felt good while he was doing it, but… It was  _stupid._ He’s way too old, and highly ranked, to go chasing danger for kicks.

At least he hasn’t gotten bitten too badly with that. He heads to the bathroom to take his last dose of antis, shaking his head. He knows not to fuck strangers without a slick, and he did it anyway, and…

He swallows the pill. Just a mild case, caught early, and treatable. Literally  _fucking stupid._

Not like he hasn’t had a social disease before, but he was sixteen the last time and literally didn’t know any better. It’s been half a lifetime, he fucking  _knows_  better. He stares at himself in the mirror, debates if he’s actually going to stop setting himself on fire with idiot sex and too much drinking.

 

 

He has the sinking feeling that he might do better for a few days, or if there’s enough work, as long as he can focus on that, but… He’ll get bored again, sooner or later.

 _From this breath to my last…_ He remembers Lane’s final vow. His, too. They’d held hands and promised to be each other’s… everything…  _from this breath to my last._

He shouldn’t be worrying about social diseases, or slicks, or any of the rest of it, because he’s supposed to be monogamous. Yeah, he and Lane both had moments of temptation, but… He was  _happy_ monogamous. The eye might have (did) wander on occasion, but the heart didn’t, and that kept the shaft in line.

He stares out at the stars easing past.

Kylo’s dead are out there, somewhere. His ghosts come to visit.

“Well? You out there?”

If Lane is, he doesn’t answer.

And Jon doesn’t know which is worse. The idea that Lane, and all like him are just gone, or that the universe is so perverse as to allow only certain, special people the chance to see their beloved dead again, and he’s not one of them.

 

* * *

Nothing else to do, Jon gets his shower.

Scrubbing down, cleaning up, he thinks about company. If he’s not going to hire some… Well, there’s usually someone, or several someone’s looking for a friend, or at least a warm body, on the F-Deck.

And unlike the Specs, there’s the possibility that maybe he’d really, genuinely  _like_  this one.

And maybe whomever he found would genuinely like him.

And maybe they’d fall into bed and not fall out of it, and maybe…

Speaking of things he’s too damn old and highly ranked for… The idea that he can just stroll around the F-Deck, find another officer who just  _happens_ to be attractive, and attracted to him, and just  _happens_  to like him, and…

He’ll be knee… shaft deep… in ass if he goes looking for it. That’s always been true. That was true when he was fourteen, just starting out, and didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Golden skin, and long golden hair, and big blue eyes. Back when he was fourteen, he was so pretty more than a few of them thought he was a girl, and were in for more than a bit of a surprise when they got him out of his perfectly tailored suit, but, even back then, if he wanted someone to touch him, he had no problem finding them. And these days, nineteen years later, he  _knows_ what he’s doing when it comes to pulling men, or women, or ones he’s not entirely sure of but likes the looks of anyway _._

The thing he doesn’t know, can’t, not now, is if they like the looks of him, and a good time with him, or if they’re looking for good access to the Master.

He might as well stop faffing about with his Lt. Colonel rank and just take the Grand Marshall. Too many people know who he is now, so he’s not exactly buying himself any room to maneuver any longer with the lower rank.

It feels odd to let go of it, though.

Feels like he doesn’t deserve the higher one, not yet. Like he hasn’t done anything to earn it.

Though… if he pulls off turning this flying monster into a palace, or capitol city, the kind of capitol city that has a palace in it, he’ll have earned those extra stripes.

He turns off the water, turns on the air jets, and lets the refresher dry him off.

 

* * *

Bed. He’s not exactly tired.

Not exactly a lot of things right now.

Horny.

He’s still fucking horny.

For a while, a few months after the attack on the  _Supremacy_ , he’d been part of a group of officers who’d lost their mates, and some of them… He  _wished_  he’d been where they were. Some of them just lost interest in sex. They lost their mate, and their libidos rolled over and died, too.

He would have paid money for that.

He  _tried_ to pay money for that. Turns out those pills didn’t fucking work. Granted, if he’d actually gone to the medbay, they might have had something that worked, but he didn’t want that in his file. Just attending those meetings was enough of a risk. After all, any chink in your armor could, and likely would, be used against you.

The meetings were as far as he was willing to go. Beyond that…

No.

And to make matters worse, his personal body decided the most effective way to mourn was to dream about sex, with Lane, all the fucking time. Then he’d wake up hard, eager,  _alone._ Sometimes wet. Sometimes  _soaked._  Those nights were a relief, because when he didn’t get off in his sleep, he’d sit there so horny he was climbing the walls, go soft, and cry. Eventually, he could stay hard, not get off, and cry. And eventually stay hard, get off, and cry.

When he could do it by himself without crying, he started to see other people, but… Yeah, that not crying thing didn’t last when he added another person to the mix. (Being able to get hard and get off almost didn’t happen, too, but Unthar is  _good_  at his job.) On the upside, Unthar told him he wasn’t, by a long shot, the only person with that issue. Even in the First Order, having most of your loves horribly killed over the course of a week was considered traumatic.

He still would have rather just not been interested.

Everything would be easier if he weren’t roaming around in this body that’s constantly trying to get tuffed because it misses being loved and that’s it’s best idea of how to get back to being that way.

Unfortunately, having a long discussion with his shaft about how attempting to fuck anything even remotely attractive isn’t going to get what it really wants isn’t going to work. (Or at least, as of now, it hasn’t.)

Settling into bed, rolling to the side to slide open the compartment with his toys, lube, and goodies will.

For a while at least.

Long enough to get him to sleep, likely.

 

* * *

He was twenty-five when he met Lane.

Eleven years after the first time he’d had sex.

And he was absolutely certain he knew all there was to know about what a human body, male, female, or somewhere in between could do.

Lane smirked at him, then smiled, called him “My pretty boy,” and proceeded to blow his mind, and a few other things, too.

Apparently, there were entire vistas of sex that Jon had never visited, or imagined, but Lane was  _very_ happy to take him there.

 

* * *

Lane was forty the first time they met. Forty-one the first time they went to bed. Old enough to know better. Young enough to do, and enjoy, it, anyway.

And after that first time, they never looked back.

 

* * *

He was also old enough to have been living alone for quite a while, and to have collected an interesting array of toys. Many of which he was  _very_ happy to introduce Jon to.

And Jon may have had (did have) a whole lot more experience with people. (Women for example. That’s a pool Lane never set a toe in.) He didn’t have any experience with toys. He was twenty-five, never lacked for company if he wanted it, so… What was the point?

That said, Lane seemed to think there was a lot of point. And if he was interested in showing Jon the point, well, Jon was happy to get it.

And by the time Lane was celebrating his forty-second birthday, Jon knew  _exactly_ what to get him.

 

* * *

These days, Jon’s the owner of a well-stocked toy box. Most of them were Lane’s originally. Several are ones he added to their collection over the years.

He’s not sure what he wants as he looks over his collection.

Okay, that’s not true. But he can’t have what he wants, so he’s not sure what he’s going to do. He glances at the dildos and plugs, but… No. Not yet. That was… with Lane. Not  _only_  ever with him, but… he hasn’t touched them, or let anyone else touch him, like that, not since.

He’s fairly sure he can’t relax enough to enjoy it, not these days, and… That had been  _so good_ with Lane, the idea of… He can’t take the idea of  _that_  being lackluster and blah.

He reaches for a slick and one of the sleeves. The green one. There are some good memories with that. Good enough to get him hard anyway.

He squirts a little lube into it, sets the temperature to human body temp, and the tightness to just a notch tighter than medium. He doesn’t have a huge shaft so he doesn’t need it at its widest setting. And he prefers a snug sensation, but not so tight that it’s strangling his shaft.

Then he sets it to the side, settles back against his pillows, and thinks about the first time he used that, while gently stroking himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Lane’s hand rested on Jon’s ass. They were in bed. Long week done, both of them with a coinciding day off, ready to have a  _good time._

That hand squeezed, gently. “Have you ever… received?”

At that point in their relationship, six or so months in, Lane had been exclusively on the receiving end, and Jon on the giving. Which suited both of them quite well. After all, Lane said he preferred to get rather than give, and, at that point in time, Jon preferred giving.

Jon nodded at Lane. “Uh, yeah. A few times.”

Lane looked expectantly at him.

“I don’t know. I had one  _really_ good time with it, but all the rest were pretty blah. Either uncomfortable or just not… good. Some of them didn’t hurt, but… It wasn’t like giving.”

He stroked Jon’s back, up and down his spine, soft, gentle, hand landing on his ass again. “Tell me about the really good time.”

“Why?”

Lane kissed his shoulder. “You want to have one again?”

“I thought you didn’t like that.” Lane would, very happily, let Jon suck his shaft, or stroke it, or well, pretty much anything he wanted to do to it, but when they got to fucking, he wasn’t even remotely vague about who he wanted where.

“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s that I prefer being on the other side. Still, variety is nice, and… I was thinking some guys who only like to give… They only like to give because they’ve never got it good, so… If you’d be game to switch it up?”

“I…” Jon remembered the one really good time, and the several lackluster ones. “Could be.”

Lane grinned at him. “Excellent, love. I’m going to make you feel so good. So, tell me about the good time.”

“Uh… Gods… I was… seventeen, maybe.”

“You really did get around… You’d have been my every wet dream if you’d been near when I was seventeen.”

Jon kissed him at that, and didn’t mention that he was two when Lane was seventeen. “You’re damn right I would have been.” He shifted so he was straddling Lane’s lap, facing him. “I’d have been there when you jerked it to sleep at night, and woke up stiff in the morning, and sucked it in between.”

Lane kissed him hard, wet, lips between his. “I love your mouth.” He stroked his fingertips along Jon’s lips.

“I know it, baby.”

“Now use it to tell me about how some sweet thing made you feel really good.”

Jon kissed Lane’s fingertips. “It was slow. Bride’s second cousin and I snuck out before they finished passing around the hor d’oeurves. So, we had  _hours_ before either of us had to do anything with the wedding.

“I’d never done that before, and… Well, I wanted to, but… Heard about. Knew it was a thing. Usually, I didn’t have the time or place for it, you know?”

Lane nodded. He knew. They certainly didn’t do it every night, because between prep, and proper playtime so everything’s relaxed and open and ready, and clean up… Anal wasn’t on the list for quickies. Or for tired nights when they just wanted to get off before falling asleep.

“And, we were at his place. So… everything he or I needed was there. He told me what I needed to do, and I was nervous and excited and… I probably rushed through that. And then did it again because I was mortified at that idea of not being clean enough.”

Lane smirked at that. “We’ve  _all_ been there.”

“You, too, a million years ago with your first time?”

Lane kissed Jon. “Six months ago, with our first time, and yes, a million years ago with mine, too.”

Jon rested his forehead against Lane, and spent a moment just breathing with him.

“So…” Lane said.

“Ah… Okay, got out of the refresher. Hard and naked and eager.”

“There’s a pretty picture.”

Jon grinned. “Oh yeah. I had long hair back then. Wore it past my shoulders. And it was a wedding, so I had on some cosmetics, too. Dark lashes, little lip gloss. So pretty you’d have choked on it.”

Lane kissed his neck and shoulder, and ran his fingers through Jon’s hair. “Tease.”

“Always.”

“Would you… do that for me?”

“Grow my hair long?”

“I was thinking dark lashes and lip gloss. I know long hair isn’t going to fly.” It was against First Order regs.

Jon grinned at him, a plan forming in his head. “Let me take you dancing, and I’ll get dressed up.”

“Oh luv, you don’t ever want to see me dance. It’ll shatter all of your illusions about me being something like put together and sexy.”

Jon kissed him. “Never baby.”

“You haven’t seen me dance.” Lane winked. It turned out that he really was a bad dancer. And he never did get the chance to get better. That said, he did like to watch Jon dance. And Jon liked dancing for him. “Story time?”

“Right. Like I said, we had time, so… A few glasses of wine. More than I usually had, so my head was a bit spinny, but… Alcohol relaxes muscles, so…”

Lane nodded. “You want a drink tonight?”

“I’m good.”

Then Lane was really staring at him, concerned. “How much of it do you remember?”

“I didn’t have  _that_ much wine. I’ve got stories like that, too, this isn’t one of them.”

“Okay. Party boy.”

“Not recently. Though, maybe if we ever get another day off, together, I’ll show you some tricks, old man.”

Lane’s smile was wide and genuine. “I’d like that. Like to hear more of this story, too.”

“Okay… Wine, messing around… Kissing, a  _lot_ of kissing. More kissing than I think I’d ever done at that point. Petting… Uh… I was kind of splayed out on the bed, feet on the floor, and he sort of slithered down me, kissing his way down, until he had my shaft in his mouth,” Lane shifted position, so that Jon was lying on the bed, face down, and began kissing his way down Jon’s back. Licking along his spine, hands kneading into the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms. “Mmmm… Yeah… Like that, but down my front.”

“I’ll get there.”

“I’m sure you will. He was sucking me off, and I was pretty keyed up, about to shoot, and then his finger was slowly easing in, and… It was tight, and slick, and burned some, enough to pull me back from the edge.”

“You start to go soft?”

“A little. I mean, seventeen.”

He felt Lane’s smirk against his back, and then his breath against Jon’s ear, and his teeth scraped the shell of his ear. “I remember seventeen. Not quite a constant bone like fourteen, but anything and everything would set it off.”

“Yeah. He stopped sucking my shaft, and started on my stones, while slowly, gently sliding that finger in and out of me, and when I was thrashing around, about to shoot off again, he slid the second one in.”

“And toned you down again?”

“Yeah. The second one was rough and fast, and it dropped me back to just turned-on, fast. Yanked me off of the edge.”

“How old was this guy?”

Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. Older than I am now, probably younger than you are. No gray hair.”

“Old enough to have some real experience,” Lane added.

“Yeah. Or he was inordinately talented.”

“Experience is how you get to inordinately talented.”

Jon lifted up and twisted some to see the spark in Lane’s eyes. “You going to use your experience on me?”

“I certainly intend to, love.” He slid a bit further down Jon’s body, and began rubbing his lower back and ass. “Gods, this is so gorgeous.”

Jon wiggled a little for him, then looked over his shoulder. “Gonna kiss it for me?”

“I’ll do more than that. I’ll spread you open slow and easy, and rock into you deep, steady, until you’re dripping, writhing, begging me to come.” He kissed the dimples to the right and left of Jon’s spine. “And then, maybe, if you’re good, and if you finish the story, I’ll let you.”

Jon moaned, face pressed into the mattress, hips rising off the bed, inviting Lane.

“Yeah, pretty thing, you want it, don’t you?”

Jon raised his hips up a bit more, grabbed Lane’s hand, and put it on his very hard shaft. “Yes!” hissed out of him.

Lane stretched up, bit the back of his neck, teeth trailing over the skin, raising goosebumps. “Then finish the story.”

Jon groaned, frustration, and the feel of Lane behind him, nudging his legs apart, kneading his ass.

“Uh… I was on the bed, and… Gods… He must have had the strongest jaw on earth. He just kept going and going, wet and slow, light, too light. Enough to make everything light up, not enough to get me off. I think I was babbling. I don’t remember. I remember how I felt, so… Ready… Then he slid another finger into me and started… Curling them? Something. He was hitting that spot over and over and I was just about hovering off the bed I felt so good.”

He could feel the way Lane was grinning at him. Feel open and exposed, too. In a way he just normally wasn’t. Lane reached over, grabbed the lube, and he heard the click of the bottle opening, and then his fingers, slick and cool, ghosting over the sensitive skin between his butt cheeks.

“He stopped sucking me, and pulled back to look. I was… I must have been sweaty and flushed and just… wrecked. Laid out, boneless.”

“Almost boneless. I bet you had at least one.”

Jon chuckled. “Almost boneless. One of ‘em really wanted to get buried deep into someone.”

“Did it get there?”

“Not really. He was kneeling between my legs, and scooted me down the bed a bit, so my hips were a little lower, and then he just  _slid_  right in. Slow and steady. Took my breath away. He wasn’t touching my shaft then, though his belly was pressed against my stones.

“Once he was fully in, he was still for a moment. I was, too, just… feeling it. You read about it, and hear about it, and wank to the idea a million times, but…”

Lane nodded, and patted Jon’s ass. “ _Butt._ It’s really different. Especially if you don’t have a well stocked toy-box.”

“I had about a half-dozen slicks, and some hand lotion, and that was it.”

“That sounds a lot like seventeen, too.”

Jon smirked at that, and wiggled at Lane a bit more. He went back to kneading Jon’s ass, placing little, soft kisses on the plump curve of it.

“Eventually he gets moving?”

“Yeah. Eventually. Or I did. I don’t remember who moved first, just that it happened, and… It felt like he was fucking me through my shaft, you know?”

Lane’s voice dropped, and he ran both of his hands up Jon’s spine. “Oh, luv, I  _know._  There’s a reason I like taking better than giving.”

“And, I felt like I was going to burst. Like, I was so close, but couldn’t quite get there. I was reaching for my shaft, going to give myself a hand, but he pinned my wrists to the bed, and was rocking in and out, though he shifted a bit, so his belly was rubbing over my shaft each time he moved.”

“Was it enough?”

“Yeah. It didn’t take long. A few hard thrusts, and… my vision went white. Spurted so hard, I got his chest and my chin.”

Lane laughed at that. “Oh that must have been a pretty picture.”

“I imagine it was.”

Lane held him close, for a moment. “And let me guess, the next guy who had ten spare minutes, you tripped into bed, and were horribly disappointed?”

Jon didn’t pout, but it was close. “I  _really_ was. And the guy after that. And the one after that. And… by that point, I decided it was a fluke, and stuck to being on the giving side of it. One of my girls did me with her fingers while blowing me, and that was really good, too, but… It was always a gamble, and when it didn’t go off well, everything else soured, too, so…”

“So you stuck with your shaft and the certain good thing.”

“Pretty much.” He turned so he was facing Lane. “So, you going to break my run of bad luck.”

Lane kissed his neck. “I’m going to make you forget you ever had it.” Then he reached for the drawer next to his bed, opened it, and pulled out a green cylinder and a slick.

“Uh…” Jon looked at the slick. “I…” he blushed a bit, feeling self-conscious, “know how to clean myself up. You won’t need that.”

Lane kissed him, hand on his ass and gave him another squeeze. “I know you do, luv. That’s for you, not me.”

And with that Jon went from slightly embarrassed to curious. “Lane…”

Lane tapped the cylinder. It was about the size of the tube Jon’s hair conditioner came in, in a bright, green crystalline substance. He grinned at Jon, bursting with good humor, and then said, “Put a slick on, close your eyes, and you can’t tell the difference between this and the real thing.”

Which certainly sounded… appealing… probably. Jon just wasn’t entirely sure what  _this_ was.

Lane kissed his neck, and shoulder, and wrapped his arms around Jon, pulling him snug against his hips.

“Trust me. You’ll like this.” There was some sort of dial at the base of the thing, and Lane twisted it. There was a button the middle of the dial and he pressed that a few times, too, and then set the thing to the side, on the bed. “Go, clean up. Everything you could need is in the refresher. Then come out here, and I’ll make sure you love it.”

When Jon got out, Lane said, “See, my jaw can’t go for hours, and I want to hold you while I do this, so…” He picked up the green thing, and squirted a little lube into it. That’s when Jon noticed there was some sort of opening in the one end. A… snug, wrinkled opening. “See, it’s got settings from nervous virgin to good time boy on his fourth client of the night. As tight or loose as you like it, and…” He settled back against the side of the bed, pulling Jon into his lap. “Grab the slick, love.”

Jon did, cracking the pack, tossing it aside, and slipping the sheath over his shaft.

“Close your eyes.”

Jon did, and Lane must have moved the thing, because the next thing he knew there was the tight, slick, hot, snug sensation of slipping into a well-prepped asshole.

Jon moaned, loud, at it.

“See, I told you you couldn’t tell the difference. Without a slick, you can, but with one…” Then he gave it a twist around Jon’s shaft, and Jon shuddered. “Granted, real people generally can’t do that.” He grabbed Jon’s hand, and put it on the cylinder. “Hold it, baby.”

Again the sound of the bottle of lube clicking open. A wet, squirting sound, and then Lane’s fingers slipping between his ass cheeks. “Do it slow, luv, easy. I don’t want you spurting, okay? Just keep your shaft happy.”

Jon made a choking sound. He barely moved it. Generally, especially with a slick, he had awfully good control, but… Here, in Lane’s lap, with his fingers just stroking right now, but knowing where they were going, and this… thing, on him…

“Gonna have me coming and going at the same time,” he managed to say.

Lane kissed his neck. “That’s the idea, baby. I’ll open you up nice and slow, and then fuck you deep and hard, and show you what it means to receive.” And with that, the first of his fingers stopped dancing around, and began to ease into Jon.

Glide. He figured out how to play with the tube, so it wasn’t quite so snug. And Lane held him, slowly fucking him out of his mind with his fingers, until he decided that Jon was ready. “Up baby. Over me.”

It took Jon a minute to figure out how to orient himself, but eventually he got his feet under him so he could move.

And Lane got his shaft under him, so all Jon had to do was sink down.

He grabbed the cylinder, and said, “Right now, you set the speed. As you ease down on me, I’ll ease it down on you.”

 

 

Jon whimpered at that, feeling the head of Lane’s shaft just rubbing against him, and the small dimple of the hole in the cylinder stroking over the head of his shaft. Then he began to ease himself down, slowly, letting his body adjust, and Lane followed it with the cylinder, taking him higher and higher with each centimeter.

 

* * *

Jon reaches for the cylinder, and pulls himself out of that fantasy. He’s hard now, eager, and knows that if he lets himself finish with that memory, all he’ll do is end up frustrated and sad.

Someone else… For a second, he thinks of Kylo, but… He’s felt wrong about wanking to Kylo since he’s met Rey.

(Well, felt wrong about it since Kylo told him about not wanting to want anyone else. He didn’t stop doing it until he met Rey. He felt even more wrong about wanking to Rey, so he only did that twice.)

Kylo and Rey… Well… That’d… be… Shit… A lot of images go cascading through his mind. Kylo on his own is just… And Rey on her own… Gods… It’d taken every ounce of will power he’d had not to say yes when she asked him to measure her naked. (Which was pretty much why he  _had_ to wank to her. She more or less  _asked_ him to spend time with her naked.) But, no. It’d be like Unthar and his wife. He’d get to be next to that sort of adoration, not part of it. More sad and frustrated.

Unthar… He can imagine what they’d do… He might as well have paid for it then.

Porn… He’s got a datapad, and access to everything… But… No, he wants this here, now, in his own body and mind. He doesn’t want to pretend to be anyone else.

He’s slowly stroking the masturbator sleeve (“It’s got a terrible name,” Lane had said. “I call it a wank rocket.”) over himself, letting his brain wander around.

It’s in danger of drifting back to Kylo and Rey, and then he realizes why. It’s going to Kylo and Rey’s house. And Poe.

He grins. Excellent-wank-fodder Poe.

Narrow as a filtration tube, never kissed a boy, easy with the girls and likely shagged a million of ‘em, Poe.

It should be illegal for narrow-for-women guys to have an ass like that. Bloody things don’t know what to do with one, and women, generally speaking, aren’t equipped to take care of them… And it’s just a shame.

But… Well… There’s an idea.

Been a long time since he played with someone who didn’t know what his body could do…

And that would be… He can see Poe in his head, looking a little nervous, and a lot intrigued.

Maybe, once, a long time ago, he kissed a guy, on a dare or something, and decided he liked it a little too much. Maybe,  _maybe_ he let some guy pat his ass and thought about it, a lot, later, but… No. Men like women, and Poe likes women, so he just… occasionally… like maybe when he was  _right_  on the verge of spurting, thinks about the guy who patted him, and then banishes those naughty thoughts and fills his head with large, round breasts and dripping, wet cunnies, and…

He’d just… be narrow. Because it’s easier to be narrow. Really easy to be narrow for women, and moderately easy to be narrow for men, but… Just stay on the straight and narrow path, charm women left and right, who knows, he was wearing that ring on the leather thong with his Maji toaken, maybe he’d been serious about one, once.

But maybe one night they’d be working together, on something, late. Too late. So late they’d get tired, and move through tired to silly, and after that late, they’d be hungry, and a shared bowl of noodles, and a few glasses of… Vodka probably. Poe could certainly put it away at Ren’s; he’d be game for a drink (or three) with dinner.

A few drinks, a good meal, whatever it is they’re working on done for the day, and a look.

Jon sighs, he can feel that look. He pumps the cylinder a bit faster. His eyes hot; Poe’s… hot, but wary. Hot, but unsure.

Hot, but about to leap off a cliff and uncertain if he wants to stay on the safety of the edge.

He can feel himself smiling at his imaginary Poe, reaching out, gently slipping his index finger against his wrist, and tugging his hand toward him. “Come on. If you don’t like it, just say stop, and I will.”

Poe flushes, and licks his lips. “Never done… this… before.”

Jon’s grin grows wicked, and his eyes spark, “Well, I’ve never done you before, either. It’ll be a learning experience for both of us.” He stills his hand, just holding himself. Letting the tension build as the drags out this moment of the fantasy.

“And… are you going to…  _do me?_ ” Poe asks, voice adorably nervous with a veneer of calm and self-assured on top.

“If you want me to.”

“I… might.”

Jon cups his hand around the back of Poe’s neck. They’re a few centimeters away, watching, breathing each other in. He can feel the heat of Poe’s skin, smell… He thinks about it… hand stilling as he remembers. Real Poe. Poe in Kylo and Rey’s house. There was… soap, a bit of some sort of mechanical scent, a little sweat… Like he’d gotten a shower recently, not more than a few hours earlier, but done some real work between then and now, too. As the night wore on… his own musk, a bit sharp, a little sour, very male. The kind of scent a lot of men who go for women try to hide with cologne or deodorant. For a second that perks Jon up, but he decides that might be a Rebel thing, though. Kylo doesn’t cover his scent with cosmetics, either, and he’s so bloody narrow for women individual hairs would have a hard time slipping through his trench.

Back to Poe. Leather jacket. Good leather, well worn, warmed by his body over and over, molded to it. Trails of brandy on his breath and skin. He’d have probably tasted boozy and sweet from the drink and cookies.

His hand begins a slow up and down again.

They’re standing close, so close. Poe’s hairy. He’s got to be. The stubble went almost all the way down his neck. And… He’s a good Resistance… Resister… whatever. Republican, though, apparently, he wasn’t, just not from the same direction Jon wasn’t. Anyway, poor boy’s likely never even met anyone who waxes, let alone done it for himself.

Jon’s fingers slip down his chest. Four weeks since he did himself last, and the hair is coming in fine and short.

There’s an image. Grabbing Poe, shaving him clean, rubbing him all over with lotion or oil and slipping all over him. Jon grins at that one, giving himself a nice, long pull. Yeah…

Granted, he knows how that feels when it grows back, and that sort of crushes that fantasy. Again, poor boy’d likely never speak to him again if he had to have a full body of hair all grow back at once, based on Jon’s recommendation that taking it off would be fun.

But it would be fun. And it’s a fantasy, and…

Real Poe. Poe in the kitchen… Poe in the kitchen has hair, and it’s real and it’s him, and real Poe pops back into Jon’s mind.

Real naked Poe. He’s short and compact and has hips and thighs to die for, and a high, firm ass, and maybe he’s not exactly cut around the chest or tummy, but… Jon doesn’t need that. He’s got the kind of muscles you’d expect from someone who does real work with real ships, lugging things around, maybe tossing heavy bales of whatever it is the Faviers eat around.

There’s an image. Poe, sweaty, lugging around heavy bales of hay. A loose, unbuttoned shirt. Trousers hanging low on his hips. His skin is slick, glistening, hairy, yes, but good hairy. The kind Jon wants to nuzzle his face against, and lick.

Faviers have a stable. Right? They have to.

“You good at riding these?” he asks Poe.

Poe drops the bale, and glances at him… Wipes the sweat from his brow. He’s eyeing Jon, in his perfect, tidy uniform. Then he pulls off his shirt, to… mop his brow again, apparently. Sure, why not? He tosses the shirt behind him.

“Never tried. You?”

“Not one of these.”

“That implies you have ridden something.” He’s stepping closer to Jon.

Jon’s looking down at him. At his chest, nipples peeking out through the dark hair, and the token he wears, and the ring on the string with the token, lower, his belly, lower yet, the dark hair getting thicker as it vanishes under his trousers. Then back up to Poe’s eyes. “Someone.” He bends a little closer, brushes Poe’s hair out of his eyes. “But, I prefer to be the one to give the ride.”

Poe licks his lips. “Uh huh. So, you saying you want someone to straddle you and ride away.”

Jon yanks Poe to him, hips to hips, bodies flush, and kisses him, deep, hard, lots of tongue, his hand on the back of Poe’s head, keeping him steady. He lets himself roll in Poe, in his scent and the feel of him and his mouth sucking around him, and…

“Fuck yes!” slips out of Jon’s mouth. He speeds his hand, increasing the tightness on the sleeve just a bit.

Poe’s sliding his hands over Jon’s body, cupping his ass, grinding into him. “I’ve been wondering what’s under this uniform.”

“Good.” He drops his coat, and begins to undo the belt around his jacket. “Because I’ve been dying to show you.”

His body is tightening, stones drawing close, heart rate picking up. His hand speeds a bit, too.

Naked. They’re naked. In his bed. Poe’s on him. He’s on his back, and Poe’s straddling him, like he said he would.

And this is new. Poe’s never done it before. But he wants it. Wants Jon to do it for him. He’s… just rubbing right now, working on letting his weight shift, and “Ahh… Yeah… There you go sweet thing, just ease on down. Does it feel good?”

He slows the hand with the sleeve, matching his imaginary Poe.

Poe’s not talking. He’s breathing hard, eyes closed, fist clenched, body slowly easing down Jon’s shaft.

“I know it does. Just take it nice and slow. Get comfy, and I’ll make this so worth your while.” He wraps his hand around Poe’s shaft, and he shudders at the feel of it.

 

 

Poe starts to move. Slow at first, but more confident, find the pace he likes, and Jon matches it with the sleeve.

“Yeah… Just like that. Gonna hit all those sweet spots inside you, and stroke you ‘till your mind whites out… Gonna make you feel so fucking good, baby…” He’s babbling. He wants to babble, wants to say soft, sweet things, and mean them.

Gods, he wants to  _mean_ them.

More than that, he wants to roll over, wants to feel hot breath on his shoulder and neck, wants sweet words in his ears while a warm body that adores him slips inside, planting kisses along his back and tells him how good he feels and how perfect he is and how much he loves him and…

He flips the fantasy, lets himself go there, in his mind at least. On his stomach, ass in the air, Poe between his legs, kissing along his shoulder, hands curled around them, rutting into him.

“Force, you want it, don’t you? Been craving this, needing it.” Poe says, his hand is drifting, slowly, from his shoulder to his shaft, pausing to play with his nipple.

Hot, wet kisses on his neck. “Just relax, baby, I’ll give you everything you need. Always.”

His head is pressed into the mattress, hips high, craving the feel of a shaft deep in him, arms around his body, a warm chest against his back.

“I’ve got you, Jon, just feel it, love. You feel me, inside you? I’ll get so deep into you, you’ll never get me out.”

Poe hand closes around his shaft. “Feels so good in my hand, mouth, ass. I love this. Love you. Love you. Love you.” He’s timing his thrusts with the stroke of his hand, kissing sweet words to Jon’s shoulders.

 

 

It’s building, sweet and deep and warm inside of him. Jon yanks off the sleeve and uses his hand instead. It’s his hand, but he can pretend. Pretend he’s on his elbows and knees and a pretty pilot’s behind him, loving him, fucking him, touching him all over.

“I’ve got you, baby. Just a little more. Wanna feel you ripple all over me. Take me over the edge with you, with that sweet ass clenching on me…”

His hand tightens as his hips snap, motions getting erratic. He’s so close. He slips a hand behind himself and presses a lube slick finger in. Not deep, he’s not prepped and anything more will burn, but just the hint of it, the idea, a little friction, and that’s enough. His head is spinning, body thrilling, spurting, over the edge.

Jon pants, breathing hard, body quivering as he relaxes for a moment.

He rolls over, pulls off the slick, ties it, and tosses it in the direction of his waste basket. The splat sound of it hitting the floor tells him he didn’t actually get it in. Won’t be the first time one of them didn’t quite land where he’d aimed it.

He can get it in the morning.

Sleep’s pulling at him, tugging his eyelids shut, and making his limbs heavy and loose.

 

* * *

In the morning, as he finishes cleaning up, he’s pleased to see he was right about Poe being excellent wank fodder.

Bloody fucking shame he’s narrow for girls.

 

* * *

He’s sipping his morning tea, in his pajamas, not necessarily feeling clearer about any of this, but… He is starting to get an inkling about what  _may_ have happened to get his mother so on board with all of this. It’s not impossible that she and Ellie Kinear had a heart to heart and her opinion shifted, but… There’s someone else who knows that he’d rather like to be getting along with his mom, and who very much wants him to be happy, and he had mentioned his mom was causing troubles, trying to get him to leave, and…

Well, Kylo likely would  _try_ to fix it for him.

And given exactly how bad his personal history of dealing-with-mom is, he likely doesn’t actually know  _how_ to fix it, and…

Jon’s not exactly sure how well his ‘Don’t Force people without permission’ lecture penetrated, or if Kylo would file this under: “It’s good to be the king.”

Sigh… He checks the chrono on his pad. If he gets dressed fast, he can likely catch Kylo before all of his meetings, and maybe, if he’s lucky, Kylo can… undo whatever the hell it was he did to Mom.

 

* * *

Sitting on the tram, churning across the F-Deck, Jon’s well aware of the fact that his mom isn’t wrong. The transportation system on the  _Supremacy_ is  _slow._ It’s mostly designed for vertical transport. They try to stick people above or below their stations. So, up and down is fairly efficient, but lateral is a nightmare.

As best he can tell, he’s fourteen klicks from the elevator that’ll take him to Kylo’s rooms, and that takes fifty-five minutes. He pulls out a datapad, and writes a note to himself to locate whoever’s in charge of transportation. They’ve got empty, or mostly empty decks, so there’s got to be a way to stick higher speed lateral trams on them for people who need to make longer trips.

In a palace, people walk. Everything is contained and central. In a city… And this fucking thing is a city, it’s just… right now… a much too empty one. But, in cities, people need a way to get from one side to the other with some sort of speed, so… Lateral, high speed trams through the storage areas, or something like that.

 

* * *

Finally, in the elevator that will take him all the way down to the AAA-Deck, where Kylo’s personal rooms are, Jon thinks about the space above Kylo’s rooms. He adds two stops to his trip.

The YY-Deck is, just like it was when he set it up as a staging area before the Last Night party, mostly empty. They’ve cleared out the party features he put in, tables, chairs, a bar, and put it back to the storage space it had been.

But, from here, right in front of the elevator that goes all the way down… He can see from one side to the other. It’s a vast, cavernous space. Maybe three klicks long and half a klick wide.

One floor down, ZZ-Deck. Again, mostly empty space. He can’t see the edges of the deck, because it’s  _mostly_  empty. When they’re in fast transport, this is a hangar deck for fighters. Get them inside the  _Supremacy_  so they don’t have to try and keep up. Right now, they’re just ambling along, so a lot of the fighters are out on training and patrols, but not all of them. Because it’s one below YY, and one above AAA, he knows the general shape and size it’s got to be. Just a bit smaller than YY.

One more down. Jon’s got access to the whole ship, but to make the button that will give him access to AAA light up, he’s got to insert his ID chit.

Technically speaking AAA is five separate platforms along the underside of the  _Supremacy._ They were the personal landing bays of several generals. To the best of his knowledge, the other four are still in use. And all of them are carefully designed to only be accessed by ship or by the one, single, elevator that goes all the way down to them.

The elevator opens into Kylo’s not-a-throne-room, which had been, in its previous life, General Ulnitor’s landing pad. It’s big enough for the General’s command ship. Now, if Kylo so desired, his personal shuttle and TIE could rest here, with room to spare, but that’s not what he uses this space for.

Jon spends a moment just looking. Black durasteel, black plasteel, black pillars, and black walls, and black floors, and more black space beyond…

It doesn’t have to be black. Just getting the paint taken care of would go a ways toward making this space more conducive to working. Get some comfortable seating, and… artwork… something, anything in here… Even if it takes a while for the garden to get into place… It’d be better.

AAA, ZZ, and YY… They could be a palace. A spacious palace. Meeting rooms, functionaries… ZZ especially, like any landing deck, it’s open to the skies on one side, so that too could be gardens, or parks, interspersed with flats and meeting spaces… Hell, he could keep some of that space as landing pads, let people who have business with the Master, from outside the  _Supremacy_ land there, near him…

All he’s got to do is find the people to put into it.

And the funds to spruce it up for them.

And Jon sighs, walking toward Kylo’s office, ready to see if he can maybe get the man to fix what he did to his mom.

 

* * *

It’s early. Too early. Kylo’s still sipping his coffee and getting ready to deal with his meetings when he feels Jon stride into his office.

He doesn’t even have to talk to C8; Kylo just gets up and opens the door.

He also doesn’t get a word in, his mouth is almost open when Jon says, “What did you do to my mom?”

Kylo blinks.

“Oh shit, you did do something, didn’t you?”

Apparently, he must have looked guilty when he blinked.

“Did you magick her? I thought we went over that. No Forcing people without permission, and she sure as shit didn’t give  _you_ permission to mess with her mind. Did you think I’d like this, or…”

Kylo blinks again. This time he manages to get out, “Uh…”

“Kylo! Look, I appreciate you attempting to make things better for us, but… You overshot better by a light year, and now… Can you… put her back the way she was or…”

Kylo blinks again, and this time manages to say, “I… didn’t cast a spell on her, or anything like that.” He gestures to his conference table. “Here, sit down.”

Jon’s eyes narrow. “You did  _something._  There’s no way she’s just… like this… on her own.”

Kylo flushes a bit.

Jon’s eyes are wide. “Kylo, what the fuck did you do?”

“I… uh… She came to see me… And… You know she’s not happy about my parents, right?”

“Everyone who’s ever met or heard of her knows that. What did you do to her? Did you tell her you killed your father or…”

Kylo looks disgruntled at that. “No. I… well… She was talking about my grandmother. Apparently, back in the day she and Ellie got together to…” he shakes his head… “I don’t know what. I think they were trying to put her and Skywalker into the position of the Empress and Emperor.”

“Wait, what?” It’s Jon’s turn to blink. “She’s a dressmaker, Kylo.”

Kylo can feel a lot of pieces dropping into place in Jon’s head, as he says, “And apparently a fuck ton more than that besides. Both of us should have known something was going on when she and Ellie knew each other.”

Jon thinks about that for a moment, and sighs. That actually… makes a lot more sense than he wishes it did. He thinks a little more… The fact that he and his sisters kept going off world to work on different dresses is suddenly making more sense, too. Now, he’s wondering what the hell it was they did while he was having a good time at parties. “Wonderful.” Apparently, he’s got another fun conversation coming up with Mom. “So…”

“So, have I told you the story of Vader… He was still Skywalker then, and Amidala?”

“No.”

Kylo goes and pours Jon a cup of coffee, tells C8 to hold his meetings, and then offers the cup to Jon. He gets settled and then tells the story. “Anyway, apparently, your mom and Ellie were trying to work them from an entirely different angle, and… well, as your mom put it, it was going great until everyone died horribly.”

“And… so, it’s not just your parents, it’s that she’s already backed one Amidala who failed horribly at this empire thing.”

“Something like that. So, she’s questioning me, making sure I’m up for the game, and I mention that I don’t intend to play the game forever, and—“

“Wait…” That draws Jon up short. They haven’t talked about the eventual successor to Kylo, but… “What do you mean by that?”

“You know I don’t want to do this… Be the Master… the rest of my days.”

“Uh, no. I didn’t know that. Speaking of things you need to  _tell_ people. Again, I  _can’t read your bloody mind,_ Kylo.”

Kylo sighs. “Okay. I do not want to have to do this forever. I thought that was abundantly clear. I’m doing this for as long as I have to make sure that me and mine, which most certainly includes you, are safe. Hopefully, at some point, Rey and I get to leave, go off, just, be us, and…”

“You want to retire at some point?” Jon’s feeling like that’s not actually a shock. Just, it would have been nice for Kylo to flat out say it.

“I really hope so. That’s a policy right? Eventually, Masters retire and a new Master gets voted in?”

Jon blinks. “That’s a policy, but…”

“So, your Mom was horrified by the idea that I might not want to do this forever, because she’s sure that if I try to leave, everyone, meaning you, will end up horribly dying, and I told her that if this requires me personally to run it, then everyone, meaning you, are going to die horribly anyway, because I’m not fucking immortal, and… If we do this election thing, then… Well… Maybe one day, you might want to run this thing, and… Uh… Who’d be better placed to win an election to Master than you? I think she kind of fell in love with, well, not me, but the Order, because she’s really involved in the idea of you running it.”

Jon’s not sure if he wants to bang his head against the table or scream.

He’s not sure if he’d be screaming in horror or relief.

This is possibly the only thing  _worse_  Kylo could have come up with than magicking his mom.

He’s not sure if he’d want to get anywhere near being  _The Master._ Let alone his mom trying to turn him into the  _Master._

Kylo lets him set for a while, steaming in emotions, before quietly saying, “I… I wouldn’t mess with your mom’s mind. First off, I respect you too much to do it. Second of all, she’d put up a fight. I’d win, but… She’d know something had happened. She’s got too much of her own Force to go down easy, so…”

Jon decides to latch onto that. Too much Force. That’s very much a safer topic than… the House of Frakes ruling the galaxy. “Too much of… Kylo?”

“She’s Force sensitive, too. Very mild. Completely untrained. The Jedi wouldn’t have been looking her up, or anything like that.” He shrugs a bit. “Seeing it in her, I could recognize the barest touch of it in you, too.”

Jon just stares at him.

Kylo shrugs at that, too. “You’ve been telling me hints of it all along. Making people want what’s good for them. Knowing what people want. Managing people. Hell, everyone  _likes_ you. It’s a skill, too, but… It’s a skill you’ve got an easier time with than most other people, and your Mom has a much easier time of it. You’ve probably got a great-great grandparent who had a fling with a Jedi back when Coruscant was crawling with them.”

Jon shakes his head at that idea. “I… didn’t think that was allowed.”

“Jedi could fuck all they liked. They couldn’t get attached, want, or be passionate. A casual one off with someone you enjoyed would likely be the kind of sex they approved of.”

“All of my family were… married… when they had kids. That was a big deal on Coruscant.”

Kylo’s nonplussed by that. “Well, if you were looking to have a non-attached fling, a married partner is likely the best way to go. Or maybe not. I don’t know. The magic runs in my family. It didn’t run in Rey’s. Maybe your mom just has a bit more than average and passed a tinge of it onto you.”

With that, Jon decides now’s the time to start banging his head into the table.

Kylo just stares at him while he does it, and then says to C8, “You remember what kind of vodka he likes?”

“Of course.”

“Bring the bottle.”

That gets Jon to stop, but when he raises his head, he says, “I don’t want to get drunk at an hour after second shift begins. I don’t want to need to be drunk an hour into the day. Just… Kylo, she’s fucking moving in. She’s  _never_  going to leave. She’s building up a new branch of the business here, because the House of Frakes has always been at the heart of the Empire, and she’s decided that’s here, now.”

 

 

Kylo winces a little. “Err…”

“She’s going to build this fucking empire in  _her_ image. Gods… She and Ellie Kinear and Thea Schiff…” He rubs his head. “We’re going to be the toys in their play.”

Kylo thinks about that for a moment. Then he says, voice steady, “Jon, honestly… Seriously, you here, now, in front of me. Just the two of us. Do we have a fucking shot of this on our own?”

“We…” He looks at Kylo, looks out at the stars beyond them… and sighs, loudly. They don’t, just the two of them, have the connections. Kylo’s got the power, probably, and he’s got the eye for it, maybe, but… They don’t know where all the bodies are buried, or even where to start looking for them, and…

On top of that, when it comes down to it, neither of them,  _really_ know how to play the game.

And, Thea Schiff, Ellie Kinear, and apparently, Mirina Frakes  _do._

Kylo nods. “Exactly. Look, I let Snoke write the fucking play for me, and he wanted a considerably less pleasant future than your mom and Ellie Kinear do. Best I can tell, they’re going to try and resurrect some sort of shiny version of the Empire, and stick us at the top of it. Assuming we keep with our principals while were up there…”

Jon sighs at that. “Assuming… It’s not like she’s got bad ideas, but…”

“Yeah, I know. I know all about having a mom with ideas you don’t necessarily love. And look, we’re going to let them set the stage, give us ideas, help us shape the message, but… When it comes down to it, they aren’t in charge, we are.”

Jon’s laugh is awfully bitter at that. “Spoken like someone who’s never had to deal with my mom.”

Kylo inclines his head. “Spoken like the man who was supposed to be Leia Organa’s son, but I left her. Who was supposed to be Luke Skywalker’s scion, but I left him, and destroyed everything he built. Who was supposed to be Snoke’s enforcer, but I cut him the fuck in half, killed his guards, stole his empire, and am reshaping it in my image. I know I don’t know how to make this… look nice; your mom does. So, let her. And if it gets too much…” Kylo shrugs a bit. Then he says, “If it ever does get to be too much, my Force will beat hers.”

Jon looks at him, and then says, “You promise? She’ll… I know how it’ll work, everything will always sound reasonable, and right, and… Next thing you know you’ve turned into the Emperor.”

Kylo shakes his head. “No. I won’t.”

Jon nods, at him, feeling the promise behind that. Then he smirks. “You know when we started this, I had significantly fewer images of nattering old ladies running things from behind the wings.”

“You and me both, but… If they’re good at it…”

Jon sighs. “Yeah. Wait until you see what she’s going to start doing.”

“As long as drive you completely around the bend isn’t on the list, I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yeah, well… She was talking to me yesterday, and… again… it’s not like she’s got bad ideas… Well… She likely does. Scratch that, she definitely does. That said, it’s not like her plans for how to turn this place into… a palace, or capitol city, or Coruscant mark II, or whatever, it’s not like those are bad, but…”

Kylo can feel the wave of… it’s not pain, but… tiredness… maybe… exasperation… that’s in there, too… futility… some of that… and a few more he can’t name because he doesn’t think Jon knows what they are, all go roiling through him.

“Jon, if she’s ever… anything… more than you want to deal with, say the word and she’s gone. Hell, speaking of saying things out loud, if you just think it loudly, I’ll do it. I’m the fucking Master of the Order, and literally  _no one_  will say anything if I ask a few people to escort a woman off my ship and return her to her home. Besides, she already doesn’t like me, so me getting into a snit and booting her off won’t ever reflect back on you.”

“You say that now. Wait until she starts being useful to you.”

“If there’s anyone on this ship who is going to be sympathetic toward you not wanting your mom around, it’s going to be me.” And Kylo floods Jon with as many of the feelings he’s got toward his own mother as he thinks Jon can take. “And I don’t care how useful she is, I value you more.”

Jon nods. “That’s reassuring.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the many very overlooked bits of Ayn Rand's writings is a line that goes something like this: "Show me what a man desires, and I'll tell you everything about him." And yes, she's talking specifically about sex. I'm not quoting in verbatim, and of course, the old girl would have an aneurysm at the idea she's been quoted in a *fanfic* but the point remains, and it's one that has informed a lot of how, and why I write sex scenes instead of just fading to black. (That, and, of course, I just like doing it. ;)
> 
> So, what do we know about Jon we didn't know before? Hopefully a decent amount.
> 
> And, I don't know if this is cheating on the slow burn or not, but... It felt useful, especially for framing what Jon's looking for at this point, and likely giving you some hints for why this'll be a slow burn.
> 
> Happy Saturday everyone! I hope you all have a good one.


	8. Organa/Solo/Ren/Amidala: What's In A Name?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some NSFW images in this one, but nothing even close to last week's haul. ;)

1/12/2

Threepio may have thought he was joining the Order to set up a diplomatic corp.

And, to a degree, he’s working on that. (Trying at least. Even the Resistance was better organized and more ready to go out the gate than The Order’s “Diplomatic Service.”)

But, from everything he can see, what he’s actually doing is handling the new department of… Jon doesn’t have a name for it yet. Whatever they’re going to call The Order’s offerings of neutral space, contract negotiation, mediation, and the like.

 _The Court of Ren._ He’s heard Lady Kinear call it that. Threepio doesn’t like thinking of it like that, but… That’s probably what he’s building. And, honestly, he’s not going to come up with a better name for it, so he might as well jot the damn thing down and fly it past Lt. Colonel Frakes, and have him light up like an overtaxed puppy offered a yummy supper, because he does that  _every time_  someone hits him with a good idea, which at first was rather gratifying, but it’s getting to the point where Threepio’s beginning to wonder if  _Kylo’s_ attempting to run this whole thing with just one other person because the Lt. Colonel, if he had a proper staff, shouldn’t be so overtaxed that literally any even remotely good idea is a lifesaver for the guy.

(Or, as R2 says when Threepio remarks on it, perhaps it has been a while since he’s been around someone who’s been willing to actually  _show appreciation_ for good ideas and he should just enjoy it.)

And, apparently, if you have the space, and the guns to back up the promise of security, people will come. And when they come, they get sent to Threepio, who does his best to chat with them, answer questions, and find out if they’re serious about this, and what it is they want and need out of the situation.

(He also spends some time pondering the idea of… well…  _them_ offering mediation and neutral space and…  _courts…_ and if  _justice_ is a concept he should allow to flit through his mind, and if he does, if  _they’re_ anything approaching near the right people for the job. He does his best not to think on that too often or too hard. Because there are days where he’s sure he could do a better job at this  _justice_ thing than any six humans, trying their hardest, and then there are days where Artoo pokes him in the hubris and reminds him he’s a persnickety bag of bolts with too much affection for a long gone age.)

So, when he has a name on his list for his 15:00 appointment, he doesn’t think twice about it.

That’s not quite true. When he sees he has an appointment, he doesn’t think twice about it. He has  _lots_  of appointments. When he actually  _looks_ at the appointment, and sees the name on it, he doesn’t just think twice, he thinks 2,968,737 times.

After all, these days, seeing Organa show up on his to-do list is decidedly  _not_ common.

 

 

* * *

Before he was Princess Leia’s personal protocol droid, he was Bail Organa’s protocol droid. And before that… Well, he’s got a sense there was a before that, because sometimes Artoo makes comments that indicate there was a before, but he doesn’t remember it. And, at this point in his life, he assumes that if he does not know about the time before that, it’s likely for the best.

That said, there was a time when See-Threepio, lived (dwelled?) and worked, at the side of the Viceroy, First Chairman of Alderaan, First Senator of Alderaan, His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort Bail Organa.

And, though it is true that Bail spent quite a bit of time on Coruscant, he made sure to get home at least a few times a season.

And when he returned home, Threepio went with him. And when he’d return home, he’d spend time with his family. Of course, his wife and daughter, but also his brother, his brother’s wife, and his nephews and nieces.

As best Threepio knows, on the day Alderaan was destroyed, the galaxy lost twenty-one of twenty-three Organas.

Leia’s cousin Almath, who was fifteen at the time, and actually on Coruscant, an ‘aid to the senator,’ was spending his time ‘learning the trade’ but mostly he was getting coffee for his Uncle and his guests, and being introduced to important people, was the other one to survive.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get him off of Coruscant quickly enough, and before the Rebellion even knew he was still alive, the Empire had grabbed him.

Five years in an Imperial prison did exactly nothing to make Almath think that politics was anything he wanted anything to do with ever again, and the minute a site for New Alderaan had been chosen, he promptly moved there, built a place to live, opened a fairly nice little bakery, and made it abundantly clear that they could not make him go into politics, even if his literal life, did in fact, depend on it.

It didn’t.

So, as Leia joined the New Republic Senate as the First Senator from New Alderaan, as she batted aside taking her position as Queen of New Alderaan, saying that she was needed in the Senate more, and as Ania Antilles ‘volunteered’ to ‘take the burden of the day-to-day tasks on New Alderaan,’ (and plotted Leia’s downfall), Almath got married, had a few children, made some awfully good bread, and did his best to forget that he’d ever been part of the royal family.

No one else on New Alderaan did, though, and when it became clear he could not be pulled from his kitchen, and when Leia fell… was pushed… from grace because of her birth father, the powers that were came for his children.

Samath and Bail Organa (he named his sons after his father and uncle) were barely out of their teens when they jumped into the world of Alderaanian politics.

And now, about twelve years later, Threepio sits in his office, on the ship that belongs to an Organa who has shunned that name (though maybe not that legacy, maybe, if this  _justice thing_ is in the offing, if  _Kylo Ren_ would know  _justice_ if it walked up and bit him on the ass) as another Organa seeks an appointment with him.

Artoo chirps at him, and Threepio nods, saying, “You’re right Artoo, this is a meeting I never expected to preside over.”

 

* * *

Artoo, still claiming that Threepio needs to hire some staff, because getting drinks and seeing people in  _is not his job_ , shows Samath Organa in. (And then fetches him a drink. But he complains vigorously while he does it.)

Samath takes one look at him, and sighs, nods, and then says, “When I saw who I had the appointment with, I did wonder.” Then he crosses the room, and, confused, stops. “I… Do we shake hands? What’s the protocol on this?”

Threepio stands up from behind his desk. He’s getting fairly smooth at it, and is thinking it’s likely time to see about an upgrade on his knee and hip joints. (He doesn’t need to sit. It’s not like he gets tired. And though he can sit, he was built to stand. But he has noticed that, in endeavors like these,  _servants_ stand.  _Equals_ sit. So General Threepio  _sits._ Even if his body isn’t ideally suited for it.) “Lord Organa, I’ll have to admit, that in this particular case, I do not, in fact, know.” He gestures to his guest. “That said, my hands are not particularly good for shaking. Humans find them cold, and the joints don’t quite move the way they should.”

“Then we’ll pass on that.” Samath takes the drink from Artoo. Then he looks at the droid more carefully. “Oh my. We’ve never met, but I’ve seen pictures of you, before.”

Artoo makes his snigger beep, and tells Threepio that everyone and their cousin has seen pictures of him, so…

“Artoo says hello.”

_Liar._

Threepio doesn’t respond to that. “Well, Lord Organa… You’re the one who set the meeting… What can I… or the Order… do for you? I can’t imagine you’re in need of neutral meeting space, or you desire a protection contract.”

“Three… General… Shall we be formal, or will you be Threepio and I’ll be Samath, and we’ll remember the few times I visited my aunty and you did your best to pretend you didn’t disapprove of me playing in her chambers.”

“However you like, Samath.”

“Good. I am here, not, at least, right now, as the personal adjutant to the current Queen of New Alderaan, but as the head of the Organa family.”

Threepio knows that’s a lie, and Artoo beeps  _liar_ again. If this were just about the Organa family, the only member of it who currently spends more than half of his waking hours with the Queen of Alderaan, who keeps him near expressly to bolster her own, non-blood claim, would not be here.

“Then I’d imagine the stories coming out about Kylo Ren has you… interested in him for those reasons.”

“I’ll admit, seeing you here makes me think they aren’t just stories.”

“They aren’t. He is the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo.”

“So… cousin Ben is no longer missing.”

“I’d highly suggest not attempting to call him that.”

“Ah… Yes, he has taken a new name.” Samath looks utterly unconcerned by that.

“And, as best as anyone knows, has no interest in resurrecting the old one.”

“Ah… Do you think…” Samath sips his drink. “Would he be willing to… Meet with me?”

Threepio pauses for a moment on that. Not to think. He doesn’t need to pause to think. His own internal processing is a billion times faster than the average human’s. No, he pauses, because humans pause when they want to indicate that something is important. Finally, he says, “About what? Not to be rude, but the Master is insanely busy, and family reunions are so far down on his list of things to do, I have a feeling both of you will be old and gray before he’d have what he’d consider a free moment for it.”

“That is fair. A busy man likely doesn’t have time for a cousin he’s never met.”

“That is true. I’m sorry you took the time to come here.”

“It’s only a few hours. Do you, perhaps, know what has happened to my Aunty?”

One of the great advantages of a metal face and an electronic voice is that when it comes to lying, Threepio has no tells. “When last I saw her, she had just disbanded the Resistance.”

He nods, and looks at Threepio. “And now you find yourself a General in the Army you were Resisting?”

“I find myself a General in the diplomatic service of the Order, with whom I’ve never been at war.” Threepio’s not entirely sure if that’s a lie or not. It’s true enough. Maybe. For now. “When the First Order shut down, the Resistance shut down with it.” That’s not precisely true, either, but it will also hold, for now.

“The Order, that just happens to be run by a man who claims to be the son of Leia Organa.”

“The man who  _is_ the son of Leia Organa.”

“Ah… yes…” Samath steeples his fingers. “And again we find ourselves contemplating Ben Organa-Solo.”

Threepio would wince if he could, but he can’t, and this is his job, so… “Master Ren. For all practical purposes, Ben Organa-Solo is and has been dead for quite some time.”

Samath’s eyes glint. “And what about legal purposes?”

If Threepio’s eyes could glint, they would. “Legally is, of course, an entirely different matter, Lord Organa.”

Samath nods. “Of course. And since I cannot get a meeting as a cousin looking to reconnect with family, how about this, as the legal and diplomatic representative of Heloise Talmash, the Queen of Alderaan, who is, of course,  _concerned_  about stories indicating that there is a blood heir of Breha Organa, who has, as of this point, made nothing about his intentions toward us clear, other than, without notice, making a direct claim to our throne, I am formally requesting an audience with Kylo Ren, to ascertain if he is, in fact, Ben Organa-Solo, and if so, what he intends to do about New Alderaan.”

Threepio nods. “I have a feeling that Kylo Ren has little interest in meeting long lost cousins for the sake of family ties. That said, Master Ren likely can squeeze some time out of his schedule in order to clarify his position in regards to the fact that he is the legitimate heir to the throne of New Alderaan.”

Samath’s eyes narrow. “He can’t be. His mother laid down both her and his claim.”

Threepio’s voice is sharp. “And you know just as well as I do that she didn’t have the power to lay his claim aside. If you’re here to chat about this, it means someone finally looked up his birthday. He’s  _the_  legal descendant of the last  _legitimate_  Queen of Alderaan, the last woman of the right blood, who properly observed the rites, and passed the trials, and should he decide to engage in the trials, he has a claim to your throne, and honestly, as I’m sure you and your queen know, a substantially better one than she does.”

“He couldn’t pass the Day of Demand trials.”

“No, Lord Organa, he has no interest in passing them. I daresay he can and will do anything he chooses to do. But that is neither here nor there. I will speak to his adjutant, arrange a meeting with him, and if he deems you fit to see the Master, he’ll arrange it for you.”

 

* * *

Once Samath is gone, Artoo says,  _It’d be easier if you just talked to Ben directly._

“I know. I don’t enjoy speaking to him directly. I do enjoy speaking to Lt. Colonel Frakes.”

_You’re wasting time._

“Fops like Samath consider anyone higher than me getting back to him quickly a sign of unimportance. I’ll talk to Lt. Colonel Frakes about it the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, Samath can… get a sense of the scale and power of the  _Supremacy._ ”

_You like this too much._

“Probably. Who’s next on the list?”

_How should I bloody know? I’m not your secretary._

“If I actually hired you, would you be?”

_Of course not!_

“Of course. Well, whoever’s up next, fetch them a drink and make them comfortable.”

_I don’t work for you._

“Of course.” Threepio turns to his datapad to see who’s up next. “And while you’re not working for me, would you be willing to put a trace on all communications that originate from Lord Organa? I want to see who he’s talking to and what he’s saying.”

 _Not very diplomatic of you,_ Artoo says, sounding absurdly pleased with both himself and Threepio right now.

“And this isn’t about diplomacy. This is about family.”

_I didn’t think you considered Ben family._

“I don’t. But his mother was dearer to me than any other human I’d had the pleasure of meeting and working with, and if those same… traitors… who forced her to give up her birthright are going to try the same maneuver again on her son, I am going to stop them.”

_You know, you’re a lot more fun now that you’re in charge._

Threepio inclines his head slightly. “Thank you?”

_You’re welcome. I’ll have his communications soon._

And once he’s alone in his office, he does have to admit, there is something to be said about owning the fact that he’s the only one, really, he has to answer to. After all, if  _Kylo_ doesn’t like it, well… He can just…

Threepio is fluent in over six million forms of communication, and when using any of those forms with another sentient he’s unfailingly polite. Usually.

It’s probably good that fewer than fifteen humanoids are conversant in the hexagoric script used by drinary op mechs. That said, they’ve got a… colorful patois… well beyond most machines, likely because they spend a lot of time with mech operators who are… not the nicest people in the history of people.

Anyway, if any of them were to hear what it was Kylo Ren could just do if he didn’t like what Threepio was up to… well, their audio processing organs might have melted.

Threepio, having thought it feels perversely satisfied, and is beginning to understand why Artoo curses all the time.

 

 

* * *

1/13/2

 

“Lt. Colonel…” Threepio says as he enters Jon’s office. It’s an… interesting is probably the best word, space.

 _Technically,_ Lt. Colonel Jon Frakes is the officer in charge of the Order’s Tactical Design Unit. That’s what it says on the door. In that his office is in a bay that overlooks a horde of specialized mechs and droids who do nothing but produce the personal military equipment of every member of the Order, he’s certainly in the right place for it.

And, inside his office, there are specs for armor, for uniforms, for boots, and hats, and ID badges, and even silly, boring things like socks. (Though proper socks, made of the right materials, keep feet warm, dry, infection and fungus free, and free up something along the lines of 36.2 million credits a year in medical expenses and close to 53,000 hours of lost time spent on light or no duty recuperating from said medical adventures. Now, multiply those benefits through each item, though said benefits are, of course, tailored to each item, and change by season and specialty, and… It’s a complicated job.)

There are posters on the walls of different palaces.

There are books. Real, physical books, jumbled with page markers, of both ships and more palaces.

There are stacks of datapads, filled with all sorts of reports ranging from, again, extremely practical and easily overlooked issues, like how switching to a hydro-copper mesh in the filtration system on the Stormtrooper face masks cut down on bacterial infections among Stormtroopers, to full on transcripts of every conversation that all of those nifty blind corners he planted in the First Year party saw witness to.

He is, at least as best as Threepio can see, the most over-scheduled man in the Order.

“Lt. Colonel, would you be horrified if I said that you really need a secretary,” he says as he sits in the chair across from Jon’s desk.

“No. And you’d be right. It’s on my to-do list.”

“Do you not currently have a second-in-command?”

“I do, and she’s currently running Tactical Design so I have time to do things like meet with you and have a chat about…” he shuffles through his notes, “Samath Organa… I should know that name, shouldn’t I?”

“Likely, yes, sir.”

“You really can call me Jon.”

“It seems unfitting.”

“Then call me sir all you like, but… I prefer Jon.”

“Very well… Jon. Do you mind, I’ve never had a title before, and I prefer being called by it.”

Jon smiles at that. “I don’t mind at all, General. When I got my first stripe I had everyone nearby salute me until they got concussions.”

Threepio’s not sure what to do with that. He thinks Jon’s joking, but his face is serious enough, he might not be.

“Well, General, tell me about this Organa, and why I should know… his?” Threepio nods, “name.”

“What do you know of Alderaanian politics, Jon?”

Jon slumps back against his chair. “Just enough to know that if you’re asking me about them, I’m not going to enjoy this conversation much.”

“That is likely correct.”

 

* * *

Jon stares at the ceiling of his office and blows out a frustrated breath. Threepio wasn’t kidding. Alderaanian politics is a quagmire. “Just to make absolutely sure… He really is Ben Solo, right? I know it’s a long shot, but…”

“I’ve known that man since literally the day he was born. I can run the retina scans against my own database of images of him which go back to him at seven hours old. He is absolutely Ben Solo.”

“Okay, good. So… what is the issue? We’ve got a prince of Alderaan. They would prefer we didn’t, but…”

“They are going to ask for a blood test.” At least that’s what Artoo had been able to uncover. Along with the fact that the internals of New Alderaan are, apparently, a tad shakier than they’d like to let on. The downside of a coup, is once you’ve run one, other people get the idea they can run one, too, and if your government is expressly non-violent, that leaves you a tad limited in ways to deal with potential usurpers.

The absolute last thing Queen Heloise wants is an actual blood (legal) heir for her opposition to rally around.

Jon nods. “All right. I guess… I mean I can see him not wanting to let someone else get a tube of his blood. No telling what they’d do with it.”

“Jon…” Threepio’s voice is as patient as it can get. “That’s not the issue at play. At least, I sincerely doubt it would be.” Though he does put a mental note in place. In a galaxy of clones, it likely is a good idea not to let the genetic material of anyone important to the Order to get out. “Breha Organa is, for very few Alderaanians, a living memory. She’s much more an ideal than a person. But once upon a time, she was a girl, and to prove her worth as a potential queen, as all true rulers of Alderaan must,” Though both Ania and her daughter, Heloise, did not. Things were ‘different’ on New Alderaan. “she set three trials for herself as her Day of Demand.

“And the first two she passed splendidly. But on the third she fell. A terrible fall. It cost her her heart and lungs. The doctors were able to set her up with prosthetics, and she proudly let them show. Many people would remark about the fact that she was so light and warm that her heart literally glowed. It glowed because it was mechanical.

“And though she survived the fall, she was unable to bear children of her own.”

Jon’s eyes close and then open slowly. “Oh.”

“And I see you have sussed out the issue. Leia Organa, child of Anakin Skywalker, was  _adopted_  by Bail and Breha Organa. It wasn’t a secret, though it also wasn’t openly discussed or mentioned, that Leia was not the natural child of Breha Organa. The Queen and her consort did not keep their many miscarriages a secret, preferring not to attempt to mourn in secret. Many people assumed, though, again, this was gossip, and not openly spoken of, that Leia was the child of Bail Organa by any number of women he was friendly with who didn’t happen to be his wife. Given who her actual father was, it’s entirely likely Bail, with Breha’s consent and encouragement, started that rumor himself. Fifteen years ago now, Ania Antilles and Jaxon Talmash used the fact that Leia Organa was the child of Vader to force her out of her birthright as the Queen of Alderaan. And doing so, they were able to start the ball rolling on the strike that would eventually push her out of the Senate of the New Republic

“Officially, she signed away her rights to the throne of Alderaan, as well as Ben Solo’s.”

“Why are they even bothering then?”

Threepio back tracks in the story. “Because of the dangers… Ben Solo was barely walking the first time someone attempted an assassination strike against him.”

“Why were people trying to kill Kylo… As a toddler?”

“Revenge, mostly.” Threepio’s voice is flat as he says that. “I’d assume you’d…”

Jon blinks.

Threepio decides that the young Lt. Colonel is in fact  _young_  and likely does not know how many ‘ex-Imperials’ who lost ‘everything’ in the war decided that a suicide mission to destroy that which was most precious to Leia Organa, the face of the New Republic, was a worthwhile endeavor. “Incorrectly, apparently. Anyway, after that, Han and Leia kept details about him, like for example, where he lived, or that he even existed, quiet. He, like Orlac Calrissian, could have been born in the limelight and grown up in front of billions as a poster child for the New Republic. Han and Leia chose not to do that with their son. As such, when Ania and Jaxon came for Leia, they did not, apparently, know Ben’s birthday. And, the last time anyone had seen him in public, he had been a child. So, it appears they were under the impression that Ben Solo was quite a bit younger than he actually was. Leia, once they were there, was able to play on their sense of ‘fair play’ and ‘kindness to the vanquished’ to let her have her position for one  _last_  Concordance day.”

Jon looks blank, but he can feel that’s got to be important.

Threepio correctly interprets that look. “Ben was born on the original Concordance Day. By pushing the contract to the far side of the celebrations, she signed it days after he was legally an adult by the standards of Alderaan. Meaning she no longer had the ability to sign away his rights.”

Jon’s rubbing his forehead. “So, Kylo Ren tells the galaxy his birth name, someone on New Alderaan finally checked how old he was, noticed that he’s still a going concern, and now they’re going to ask for a blood test he can’t pass, hoping that no one remembers the fact that he never could have passed it, and… they don’t rally behind him?”

“Or some version of that. I assume they want his blood to discredit him and any claim he may have.”

“The grandson of Vader thing won’t be enough?”

“I have a feeling the son of Leia Organa, especially among the faction that did not approve of forcing her out in the first place, will carry more weight than the grandson of Vader.”

“Assuming the ones who booted Leia out don’t flash too many pictures of him in the mask, waving the red lightsaber around?” Jon asks, voice dry.

Threepio would shudder at that, if he could, but he can’t, so doesn’t. He can sigh though. “Well, yes, I suppose there is that.”

 

* * *

1/15/2

 

Jon listens to Samath Organa, as he lays out the pieces of his concerns.

Namely, he doesn’t want a self-proclaimed King of New Alderaan marching his millions of troops into the place and taking over. And, he’d also like proof as to if Kylo Ren is in fact, in the running for King of Alderaan, one way or another.

Jon nods. He looks to Threepio, and nods again, and says, “Yes… Those are valid concerns. I can assure you, Lord Organa, that the one thing the Order does not do is conquer. Kylo Ren will not be marching our men through New Alderaan to claim it for his own. People come to us. Not the other way around. That is an unalterable, bedrock principal of the Order. Beyond that… If you can stay another night or two, I’m sure I can arrange a time for you to speak to Master Ren directly, because he’s the one who will consider the rest of your request.”

Samath appears pleased by finally getting time with Master Ren. “Of course, and yes, I can enjoy another night or two of your hospitality, especially if I can get a promise of non-aggression in writing.”

“I’m sure we can accommodate you, both as a matter of your physical body, and as a political reality,” Threepio says.

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

Jon looks tired when he sidles into Kylo’s office moments before he’d usually head home.

Kylo can feel it off of Jon. He glances at the food in front of him. Skimpy portions for three, but they’ve got cookies at home. “Dinner?”

“Yeah.”

Once there, Jon flops back into the blue armchair, loosening his collar, as Kylo says hello to Rey.

“What blew up today?” she asks.

“I don’t know, yet,” Kylo replies. “Do we want Poe for this?”

Jon shrugs. He can’t, off the top of his head, think of any reason they’d need Poe for this, but he certainly doesn’t mind him being here. Maybe he’ll have some good ideas. “You got enough food to stretch that far enough for four of us?”

“We’ll make it work,” Rey says. “I’ll get him.”

“Tell him to bring a bottle, too.”

Kylo’s staring at Jon. “How bad is this?”

“I’m not sure.”

Kylo puts the cookies on the table, and divvies up supper, a rabbit stew, into four bowls. “You feel… disconcerted?”

“Probably a good term for it.”

“Your mom?”

“Fortunately, no. Not now. Hell, maybe I can use her on this. Have her wander over and have a chat…” Jon’s pondering the angles on that. (And wondering if his mom already has found Samath, and what she might do with a genuine Organa if she found him… Maybe not a great plan…)

Kylo lets him ponder, as he checks the cooler to see if they have any greens. They do. He adds them to the table.

“What’s going on?” Poe says as soon as he and Rey are back, and he spies Jon sprawled out in the comfy chair.

“We don’t know, yet,” Rey says.

“Well…” Poe says, putting his own supper on the table, and the bottle of Correllian whiskey. Kylo winces at it. His dad and Lando used to drink it, and he always hated the smell. And, of course, it was the first alcohol he and his knights got a hold of, so it’s also eternally burned into his mind with the worst hangover of his life.

Jon gets up and moves toward the table as they start to divvy up the rest of the meal. “Threepio got a visitor recently. He gets a lot of them. Most of them are people looking to take advantage of what we’re offering. Or at least ask about it. This one just didn’t know the right way to get a hold of us, and figured that would be the easiest way to move up the chain.”

“And it was?” Rey says.

“And it was,” Jon replies. “Threepio listens, thinks, gets me, I chat with him, and now I’m here.”

“Still not having told us what’s going on,” Kylo says, pointedly.

“Samath Organa, Bail Organa’s great nephew, current secretary to the Queen of Alderaan, and if I’m understanding the bloodlines correctly, your cousin, would like to know, on behalf of New Alderaan, and her Royal Highness, Queen of New Alderaan Heloise Talmaash, if Kylo Ren would be willing to take a blood test to prove once and for all that he either is, or is not, the man who used to be Ben Organa-Solo, only direct, living descendant of the last, legitimate Queen of Alderaan.”

The four of them think about that for a moment, and then Kylo tentatively says, “Uh… And this is an issue because?”

“Because, if Threepio is correct, you do not, in fact, have any direct DNA links to what used to be the royal family of Alderaan, what with your mother having been adopted, and unless they have your mother’s blood on file, you  _cannot_  pass a DNA test.”

Poe’s seeing it, remembering it, too. He was part of Leia’s security team when they toppled her, using her father’s name. “They beat your mom out of the running for Queen of Alderaan because she was Vader’s child, so… Why are they trying to check you, and who are they intending to run your blood against?”

Rey looks to him, thinking of Kinear’s lesson on Amidala, “And who might they actually find if they did that test.”

Jon sees that and says, “Okay… Wait. I know that look,” he turns to Kylo. “What skeletons are hiding in your DNA?”

Kylo half-shrugs. “Vader’s wife was Padme Amidala, former queen of Naboo.”

Jon groans. “Oh… That’s a million messes all waiting to happen.”

“So, just say no,” Poe says.

“As soon as he says no, the claim that he’s Leia Organa’s son blows up. People will be suspicious as to why he’s not willing to verify it,” Jon replies.

“Well, it’s a stupidly specific lie if it’s not real,” Kylo bites out, chewing a bite of his supper.

“Always,  _always_  tell specific lies. Preferably of the sort you know check out. Vague lies look like lies. Specific lies, especially stupid, inconvenient ones, sound truer,” Poe says.

Jon nudges his supper. “Are there… pictures of you with your parents?”

“Not that I have, and not ones that couldn’t be faked.” He shakes his head, and looks at Poe, “Did she still have the house in Chandrilla?”

Poe shakes his head. “Sold it a long time ago and put the credits into the Resistance.”

Kylo shrugs. “The only place I knew of where she might have had things… Apparently sold a long time ago. They registered me as Ben Organa-Solo as soon as my eyes finished shifting from blue to brown. My retinas and finger marks will match.”

“Okay, we can just go with that,” Jon says, looking relieved.

Kylo and Rey don’t.

Poe again notices that. “Out with it.”

“A bit less than a year ago, Ben Solo became Ben Amidala, and gained a wife, Rey Amidala.”

“In the official register?” Jon asks.

Kylo nods.

Jon groans and bangs his head against the table.

“So, you’re saying, the only direct route between Kylo Ren and Leia Organa requires a detour through Ben Amidala, and you’re thinking that’ll cause  _issues_?” Poe says. “Is Naboo really  _that_  big of a deal?”

Rey shrugs. “The Kinears thought it might be. Not for us, personally, but if we have a daughter…”

“She’ll pass the blood test, and someone will be jockeying for her to be the next Queen of Naboo,” Jon says.

Poe shrugs. “So, this might be an issue, if a child you don’t have, gets enough support from people who don’t know you exist as an option, decide to make it an issue. I mean… if they get annoying about it, can’t you just say, ‘No?’ My dad told me I couldn’t do things all the time. ‘No baby, you can’t rule Naboo!’ Problem done, right?”

The look on Jon’s face, aimed at Poe, is best described as  _fed up with amateurs._ “The easiest way to secure your rule is to make sure there are no other options. In blood monarchies, that’s often done with discreet poisons. According to Threepio, that’s the real reason why we’ve got Organa sitting in the  _Supremacy_. Whether there’s any chance of you taking the job or not, the existence of options is destabilizing, and Queen Talmaash is apparently already on shaky ground as it is. As long as you, or your children, can make a decent royal claim, there will be people trying to manipulate that,” Jon says.

The four of them are quiet for a moment, and then Jon says, “How badly would changing back to Solo hurt?”

Kylo winces.

Then Poe sniggers, a bit, it’s not happy, ironic mostly. “What was the last thing Lor San Tekka said to you?  You cannot deny the truth of your family?”

Kylo rolls his eyes extravagantly. “Amidala is one of my family names. Of the lot of them, it’s the only one I can stand.”

Rey’s voice is quiet as she says, “It’s also the only family name I’ve ever had.”

Jon’s looking at both of them, feeling a lot of years and history, all aching through this name thing.

Poe’s watching them, seems to feel how… intense the Rens are on this, and decides to not push it. He then says, “How good is you sabbac face?”

Kylo raises an eyebrow.

“Tell ‘em to fuck themselves sideways if they ask. No blood tests, no proof, leave it at if they press it, you’ll prove it, but make them press it. Unless they’re dead certain you aren’t the real deal, they won’t, because their position becomes weaker if you prove you’re the heir of Alderaan, right?”

Kylo glances at Jon, who nods at that.

Poe continues, “And if they’re any good at this, they’ve got to wonder who Vader’s Lady was, and are likely concerned about what that might come up with… So… Just leave it be and dare them to up the bet.”

That response makes a  _lot_ of sense. Kylo instinctively likes it, but… Well, it’s also the answer that lets him ignore the problem that much longer. He looks to Rey. “Lady Amidala?”

She squeezes his hand. “Always.”

“That said,” Jon adds, “you know that as of ten minutes after you claimed yourself Ben Solo, at least twenty of the people who attended that gathering looked you up.”

Poe waves that away. “Once you’ve done a name change, you’ve got to know to look through the alias search. Ben Solo turns up nothing, at least not on this one, anymore. Now if they’re clever enough to put it into the alias search…”

Rey takes a bite of her supper, and then says, “You run the register, right?”

Jon nods. “The Order does.”

“Can’t you… lock certain people down? Make them unsearchable? Set it up so that if someone looks them up, you get a report, and then… I don’t know, you feed them whatever it is you want them to know?”

Poe’s grinning. “We… uh… did that on occasion. Had a few slicers slip in and… modify some of our member searches.”

Kylo groans, pulls a datapad to himself, and then makes a note for himself:  _Make sure register is secure._ “Why is it my to-do list  _never_  gets shorter?”

 

* * *

It’s a lot later that night, when Kylo and Rey are floating around in his bath, relaxing, getting ready to play, and then sleep, that he says, “I told you about Mirina visiting, right?”

Sometimes their minds are so close, he doesn’t need to tell. Sometimes he does. And he’s not always entirely sure if they’ve spoken about whatever it was, or if she just picked it up from him.

Rey nods to him. “Yes. And Jon being less than thrilled about her deciding to take over the Order and shape it in her own image. Which I don’t disagree with, for the record.”

Kylo nods. “Just, poke me, if it looks like she’s doing too much directing and not enough taking orders.”

Rey’s skeptical of her poking ability in the face of Mirnia telling people how to do things, and they both sense it. Finally, she says, “Okay. So…”

“I was thinking about Amidala, and… How that’s the name I gravitated to.”

“Beyond it being the only one you knew…”

“I mean… Thinking about it… Organa, Antillies, Skywalker, Solo, and Amidala. I’m not short on family names.”

“Antillies?”

“My grandmother’s maiden name.”

“You aren’t kidding about not being short on names.”

“Queen of Alderaan, Breha Antillies-Organa. There are probably entire libraries devoted to her as a ruler. We wouldn’t have to scrounge around in a local library to find one book.”

“She… ruled for more than fifteen years, right?”

 

 

“Yes, and she was the last Queen of a centuries long ruling family…” He pushes off the back wall of the bath, and shifts a bit, floating on his back, not sitting against the side. “She told me stories about her. A few of the nannies did, too. But… No spark there.” He dips under the water, and splashes up a second later, pushing wet hair out of his face. “She didn’t… capture my imagination the way Amidala did.”

“Because she was real?” Rey’s still at the edge of the bath, sitting against the edge, letting the water surround and keep her warm.

“I don’t know that. The stories I got… She was… perfect. Effortlessly wise and just and calm and settled, ruling over a peaceful planet of peaceful people who got along in harmony and joy.”

“How your mother understood her mother.”

“Her idealized version of someone she loved. That was true. That was always true in those stories. So much love for her, so much loss. She stopped telling me them after a while, because they’d make me cry. She was projecting her own loss. I mean, I can’t imagine I had that much empathy for a lost world as a six-year-old.”

Rey tries to imagine six-year-old Ben. She can easily imagine him having that sort of empathy. She can also easily imagine him feeling his mother’s sorrow for her loss. She steps off the side to stand next to where he’s floating, resting her hand on his chest.

“Perfect didn’t interest you?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I got too cynical about it.”

She can see that.

“But… Padme… Amidala. I said it to Mirina. Didn’t know I was saying it when I did, but… I told her that she got caught in a terrible bargain by the Force. Powers she didn’t understand, couldn’t control, pulled her about like a toy, and all she could do was her best.” He shifts again, so he’s kneeling on the base of the pool, and snuggles into Rey, his face against her belly. “I was… obviously, better equipped to deal with what came my way, but…”

She can feel the shape of but. She still thinks it’s important for him to say.

“I asked Mirina if it seemed like they had two Padmes. One who was all in on moving the Empire forward, and another who wasn’t, and she said that that matched her memory fairly well.” He kisses her belly, and she pets his wet hair. “I feel like there were two Kylos sometimes. Snoke’s toy, and your… my… Kylo.”

She kisses the top of his head. “The real Kylo.”

He nods at that. “There had to have been two Padmes. The real one, who… was a queen, and trying for peace, and didn’t want an Emperor. Anakin said she was fond of Obi Wan, and… she was a girl once, so she had to have had wants and needs and friends and… And there was Vader’s Padme, pulled to him, and his wants, and his needs, and…”

“That feels real to you.”

“It does.” He scoots back a little so he can look up at her, and her hands find his face. “I… feel good, settled with Ren. It’s real, and it fits in a way Solo never did or could. But Amidala isn’t far under the surface and,” he’s staring up at her, figuring out how to put these feelings to words, “that struggle, how you gave me the strength to pull out of it, triumph over it,” he kisses her belly again, and holds her tight, “You’re not dead. Padme is.” He nuzzles against her. “Amidala triumphant. The story rewritten, and this time, we win. Love wins. He said he never loved her. When the time came, he didn’t choose her.” He holds her close, ear to her chest, feeling her heartbeat, listening to her breath, feeling her, real, here now, in his arms. Feeling the love between them, and seeing that moment, Snoke behind her, the saber in his hands, and the cliff he was about to leap off of. “You chose me, and I chose you, and it got off to a rocky start, but…” and for another moment, he just holds her. “We won, and… It’s not just the only family name you’ve officially had, it’s… Us.”

 

 

She kisses him, sweetly, bending to reach his lips. “It’s being better than the people who came before us.”

He nods, kissing her back. “It’s putting each other first.”

“Then we’ll lock it away. Keep it for ourselves and our children. Like Kinear said, we’ll have our public name, shield, and this is… us.”

He nods, holding her close. “This is us.”

* * *

1/16/2

 

Kylo eyes Organa as he enters. There is, of course,  _no_ family resemblance. That said they both have black hair.

Organa is darker-skinned, with a neat black beard, and, from the pictures he’s seen, bares a strong resemblance to his grandfather. He looks about as much like Kylo as Poe does.

They go through the niceties, make some small talk while Kylo offers him coffee, and then spend a quiet moment just staring at each other.

 

 

Finally, Kylo say, “I take it we’re cousins, then?”

“You’re claiming we are. I’m here to see about finding out if you can back that up.”

Kylo nods. “I’ll admit, that’s the bit I’m curious about. It wasn’t a secret that Leia Organa was adopted, so… Who exactly do you intend to test me against? You and I shouldn’t have any matching DNA.”

Apparently, Kylo wasn’t supposed to know that. That said, Samath’s got a cover lie. “The rumor was, she was Bail’s.”

Kylo can’t believe that he’s going to try that line. “Bail Organa and Darth Vader… The Force works in mysterious ways, Lord Organa, but I’ve never yet heard of it allowing two  _men_  to make a baby with each other. Likewise, absolutely  _no one_ was under the impression that Darth Vader was a woman.”

“Under the mask and armor, who could have possibly told?” Though Organa has the grace to look mildly chagrined after trying that line.

Kylo catches the annoyance in Organa’s mind. Given how far outside the circles of Alderaan that Ben Solo was raised, they were hoping he’d be completely ignorant.

“It’s true that I was kept out of Alderaanian politics. I didn’t know I was in the running until after she signed away my rights. It’s true that she hid me away and out of eyes of the galaxy at large. That said, even I paid enough attention to know who her  _father_ really was,” Kylo says. “So, let’s try this, what, exactly do you want my blood for, then?”

That gets a minute flicker of an eyelid.

“Ah… You didn’t. You know I wouldn’t match any other Organa, so you’d toss the vial aside, and loudly tell everyone on the planet I didn’t match up, never specifically claim I’m a liar, but hint at it, and hope most of the people who knew Leia Organa was adopted either forgot or kept quiet.”

That gets the barest hint of a glare. Kylo’s not sure if he could have read that without the Force.

“I take it you will not be offering up a blood sample, then,” Samath says.

“No. I will not.”

Samath nods to him. “We, of course, expected that.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve talked to your underlings, they tell me that, here, ruling over a massive pile of weapons, among them guns big enough to blow a planet to pieces, the grandson of Vader sits, and intends to do nothing about New Alderaan.”

Kylo cocks his head. He wouldn’t have put it that way, but all the particulars of that sentence are correct. “I have no interest in New Alderaan. In time, I may get recruiting stations there, but that’s as far as I want to go. I understand New Alderaan has free travel, and your citizens may come and go as they please. Thus, any Alderaanian who wishes to be ruled by me, knows how to get to me. Satisfactory?”

Organa nods slightly. That’s not satisfactory, none of this is satisfactory. That said, getting a blood sample to thoroughly discredit Kylo Ren and put this whole thing to bed, would have been tolerable. But this is, realistically, as good as he’s going to get. He’s staring at Kylo, really looking at him. “I expected more of your grandfather in you.”

Kylo shrugs. He knows that Bail Organa isn’t the grandfather Organa’s talking about. “And I’ve been doing my best to be my own man for years now.”

Organa nods. “Your…” His lips purse, he’s not exactly sure what Jon is. Obviously more than the Lt. Colonel his rank suggests. “Friend, told me that a non-aggression pact could be arranged.”

“Easily. Like I said, I have no interest in New Alderaan. That said, Alderaan has a long and glorious history of not exactly being as politically neutral and uninvolved as it claims to be, so you’ll forgive me if I seek independent verification of your non-aggression.”

“And will you blow us out of the galaxy if we take sides?”

Kylo smiles at him. “No. I’ll find the ones of you who are fighting against me, and punish them directly. Then I’ll destroy that military you claim not to have, cripple your economy, and offer you ‘protection’ while you rebuild, then recruit freely among your best and brightest. Have a chat with Ambassador D’Vrys of the Qualee if you’d like to see what I do to people who fight against me.”

“She’s Prima of the Council now, and I already have.”

“Wise man. My legal department will likely be able to draw up terms in a month or so, and I’m sure in less than a year, we’ll have them settled to both of our liking.”

Organa smirks.

“Or at least to the level where it’s tolerable to both of us.”

He nods. “You’re not what I was expecting.”

“I hear that a lot.”

“I’d imagine you do.”

 

* * *

It’s dinner time, again, and this time Kylo’s expecting to have supper with just Rey.

But expecting isn’t getting, and just as they’re sitting down, he feels Poe come close to his door, and Rey opens it before he can knock.

Poe just stares at where the door was, hand up about to knock, and then steps in. “That’s unsettling.”

“Didn’t want you in the cold any longer than you needed to be.”

“Thanks.” He puts a plate of mixed veggies on the table, next to the rolls, and then takes his coat off.

“Getting comfy?” Kylo asks.

“Yes. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on crashing all of your meals.” He grabs a plate, and fork for himself, and then pours himself a cup of water.

“But you’re crashing tonight.”

“Yeah. I figure when you see why, you’ll be okay with it.” Then he pats the corner seat. “Tonight, you go here, okay, Ren?”

Kylo raises and eyebrow, but switches places with Rey, so he’s sitting between Poe and Rey.

Once he’s in place, Poe clears off a bit of space between them, and lays a small holo projector, the kind with just a tiny display, maybe ten centimeters on a side, in front of them.

 

“You’d just… well, killed the First Order, I guess. Or gave birth to the Order. Or however you saw it. And we’d met on the beach. Here actually. To talk about what was next. And I knew, going into it, I just  _knew._ When she called the meeting her voice was… resigned. She’d been off with Chewie talking to people we owed money to, paying off old debts, and… I knew what was coming.

“And I wasn’t wrong. She said her bit, and then left us to squabble in the sand around the fires, because most of who was there didn’t want to give up. And for a while, I was mostly fighting with them, taking the position that Leia said we were done, so we were done, and that was that, but…

“Eventually, the arguing was getting more heated, and then Chewie just  _howled._ He’d been away from the fight, on the edge of the beach, watching the water. And I realized I hadn’t seen her in hours.

“I…” His eyes are bright. “I’d gone to the Falcon, because I’d seen her get on it, and… Uh… I found her clothing.” Poe blinks. He’s not crying. Not yet. His eyes are wet though. “It was so stupidly small. She was such a big personality, that… Anyway… they felt like doll clothing, you know?”

And for a moment, Kylo really wishes he could say yes, but… “The last time I saw her in person, she was still taller than I was.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Kylo bites his lip, hard. “My… uh… mental image of her… it didn’t really update.”

Poe sniffs a bit, and Rey holds both of their hands. “Anyway. Asking about the house in Chandrilla reminded me of this. Chewie and I… gathered up her stuff. He was her official next of kin. And, there was this. She kept it with her, and… He gave it to me. Said it hurt too much to look at, so I guess he knew what was on it, but…

“I didn’t… look… until last night. Just kept it, because it was hers, but… Do you… want to see?”

Kylo’s turn to blink. “Do I?”

“It’s a party. I don’t know the people in the background. I think Chewie’s the one who took the picture, because I can hear the howling, and your Dad is talking to him.”

Kylo nods. He’s fairly sure what this has to be. “Yeah. Uh… Am I a little guy? Seven-years-old?”

“Can’t tell by looking, but probably. You’re bigger than Rugh and smaller than Opal.”

Kylo closes his eyes slowly, and he can feel how much Rey wants to see this, but she doesn’t want to push him, and…

He turns it on. Like any holovid the image is translucent, but it’s the three of them, with people in the background Kylo doesn’t know. The image is jerky, and it’s fairly clear that Chewie just got handed the camera because once it stops moving, he’s taking the picture from above them.

“Make sure you don’t cut our heads off!” Han’s saying.

 _You’re the one who cuts people’s heads off in pictures._ Chewie replies as the camera nudges up just a tad.  _Got you!_

Han’s holding Ben, has his arms around him, and he’s riding his Dad’s hip. Leia’s next to them, arms around them both. They’re ready for the wedding, all dressed up. His mother’s hair in the most elaborate braid he’d ever seen, before or since, and she’s draped in a long, flowing rust and scarlet dress. Alderaanian colors of luck and joy. Both he and his dad are dressed up in tidy suits. Han’s got a flower on his vest, and looks a bit rushed. Like he’s got to get moving, fast.

“Hey, Lando! They gave us cameras and told us to record something for you,” That’s Leia.

Ben’s voice. It’s so high and tiny. “Happy Wedding Uncle Lando! We got to see the cake already and it’s ENORMOUS!!! It’s bigger than I AM! They say it’s chocolate and coffee and vanilla and there’s a strawberry tier and there’s supposed to be a layer with lemon curd, and I LOVE lemon curd and…”

Leia’s laughing. “And we’re looking forward to sharing the dessert with you. Everyone’s starting to go in now, and Han’s got to head off and find you, so… All of our love, and best wishes today and the days to come!” She makes a little kissing gesture at the camera.

The picture goes flashing away, and they hear Chewie saying,  _Shit, we’ve got to move. He’s going to skin us alive if we’re late for this thing._

They get a somewhat blurred image of Han putting Ben down, and kissing Leia, running his fingers through Ben’s hair, grinning at both of them, and then it goes dark.

Kylo’s biting his lip, hard. After another moment of just looking at where the image used to be, he finds enough of his voice to say, “Is that the only image?”

Poe nods. “Yeah.” He’s not sure what to say, so he starts to eat, and watches as Kylo just stares at where the image was.

“That was the last happy time,” Kylo eventually says. “Less than a year later, it’d gotten so bad they shipped me off to Luke.”

Rey’s stroking his back. “What’s bad?”

Kylo swallows… “She was gone, a lot. This meeting, that meeting, this other meeting. The house was outside Chandrilla, and I don’t know how long it took to get home, but a lot of nights she stayed in the city. He… he was with her. Or with Chewie. Or sometimes with me, but mostly away.

“And I was stuffed in a house with a cook, a nanny, and a tutor.

“And a malevolent spirit in the back of my head.

“And too much power.

“And no control.

“And Dad was coming home soon. They’d been telling me that for days, to try and keep me in a good mood. He was supposed to be home that afternoon, but… Something… happened. And he was going to be delayed. I don’t know if I ever knew what the holdup was. But… I got into a fight with the tutor. My math was wrong. My math was always fucking wrong, and it was fucking wrong again, and… The voice was telling me math was for peons. Math was for clerks and dullards, and I had a bigger, better destiny, and he was trying to hold me back, shackle me to some sort of meaningless job as a bureaucrat, and I was so angry, and the voice kept telling me to let the anger go to, to use it, to show them all what I could be and do and… And then the tutor wasn’t breathing, and he was turning blue, and he fell to the floor, and he wasn’t moving, and I was screaming, and the nanny came and saw, and then she was screaming, and I was sure I’d killed him, so I ran away and hid, and… And he wasn’t dead. I didn’t know that for hours and hours because I hid so well they didn’t find me for close to a full day.

“Dad found me. And he gave me some food, because I was so hungry and tired and angry and thirsty and… wrong… So fucking wrong. I could see it in the way he was looking at me. Like I was fragile and broken and evil and dark and just  _wrong._

“Like he was afraid to touch me.

“And he and mom had been arguing about sending me off to Luke. He didn’t want to send me off. Didn’t think all Force all the time, off in the middle of nowhere was the way to go. But… Mom had been saying I had too much power to go untrained and I had to learn control and…

“And he was back. I’d been having trouble with math for a long time, and we were going to work on it together. But we didn’t. We never did. Mom got home a few hours later, and they packed up my stuff, and took me to Luke. And I never got to go home again.” He touches the holovid. “And, I never saw, both of them, at the same time, after that. I was fifteen the last time she visited. Nineteen the last time he did.

“They’d write and call, but I’d duck out on the calls, or not read the letters.” He touches the holovid projector again. Watching the images, blinking back the tears. “That’s who we were supposed to be. Who we were never lived up to the image.”

He bites his lip. “That’s Ben Solo. Sad and hurt and… broken, wrong. Untouchable.” He looks to Poe and Rey. “And I absolutely cannot go back there.” He hands the holocube back to Poe as Rey gently strokes his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey All,
> 
> So I know some of you were wondering where the Dynamic Duo went, and well, here they are. And they're the main actors for the next... or seven or eight chapters, and then we'll have some fun with Jon and Poe and Co. 
> 
> Meanwhile, thank you for the patience. We're about 160 pages into this now, and finally have our major players into position so that, in the next two chapters, we can start laying out where we're going to go with this installment.
> 
> (Woo hoo! With a side of, wait, you wrote 160 pages of set up? Just to get things into place? Loves, I really wasn't kidding about EPICS.)


	9. Lessons

1/20/2

Ellie is unreservedly pleased to join Rey and Kylo in what is, hopefully, the first of their, How-To-Be-People-In-The-Political-Realm lessons.

Hopefully.

As she heads into their private room, where Rey and Kylo are already waiting for her, it occurs to her that she’s seen men face execution looking less perturbed.

 

 

“This really isn’t going to hurt,” she says. Then she holds her hands out. “See, no ruler.”and Rey glance at each other, dumbfounded because not only do neither of them know what a ruler is, they also have no idea why she’d have one.

Ellie shakes her head, and sits at their dining table. Rey and Kylo join her. “Back, a million years ago, when I was a school girl, there were flat, plexi-plast strips with marks on them used to measure small distances or draw straight lines. They were also good for whacking misbehaving little girls across the fingers.”

“Your teacher hit you?” Rey asks. There have been times she’s wanted to smack one of her students, but she’s never  _done_ it.

Ellie half smiles. “Not very often. And generally not very hard. It was mostly to help focus attention, rather than a way to enforce behavior through pain. Master Loonia, on the other hand, would raise welts with his ruler, but I wasn’t in his class.”

Kylo and Rey both wince.

C8 comes in a heartbeat later with a gently rattling tray. It’s, as close as can be had on the  _Supremacy_  to a proper, Imperial high tea. After all, if they’re going to do this, they’re going to do it in style.

 

 

Ellie smiles at them as they both look at the four layer tray, with pastries, fruits, little sandwiches, and on the bottom level, a teapot, three cups, tiny plates, and a collection of condiments.

“Thank you, C8,” Ellie replies. It’s the first time she’s ever thanked a droid for anything, but unlike her students here, she is  _good_ at this, so when she noticed that Rey thanks serving droids, that immediately joined her arsenal of manners.

“You’re welcome, Lady Kinear. Anything else?” he asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head. Then pauses, and says, “My next appointment is in two and a half hours, a ten minute warning would be nice.”

“Done, sir.”

Then C8 leaves Kylo, Rey, and Ellie, along with high tea, and a lesson, or maybe planning session.

Ellie eyes the teapot, and then Kylo. “Hightest ranking host serves, and this is one of the few parties where I’m not it. So…” she gestures to Kylo and the tea pot.

Kylo looks at the tea pot, and looks at Rey, and then sees Ellie shake her head. “Today it’s you, Kylo. We’ll talk about when and where it’ll be appropriate for Rey to pour when you are present, but not today. To start off, though it’s considered an immense honor to be served, by hand, by someone on your level.”

“What is this?” Rey asks. She’s never been to a meal with rules this formal, or what to her, looks like a pyramid of desserts.

“This,” Ellie says, “is Imperial, and before that, Galactic High-Tea. People of a certain political level would have breakfast upon waking, luncheon between eleven and noon, high tea at four, supper at nine, and if you’re really with the game, nightcap at midnight.”

“That’s a lot of meals,” Rey says, trying to imagine eating that often.

“Why my mother was never home for meals is making more sense,” Kylo says.

Ellie nods at that. “The New Repbulic didn’t quite play by those rules. They tended to think things like high tea were a lavish waste. Still, meals were certainly a tool in the political arsenal more than a way to fuel the body. In many social situations, food is the equivalent of lubricating oil. It helps everything glide easily against each other. With the exception of a high banquet, social meals tend to be small, and there are that many of them, so that you have several opportunities per day to have small, private meetings while doing something genuinely pleasurable.”

 

 

Kylo’s eyeing the tea cup, which feels stupidly tiny in his big hands.

“To start this off, the tea is already brewed. If we get to the point where you’re looking to really impress, we’ll bring out the actual leaves, and you’ll pour the water over them. For right now, we’re starting on the basic level. Leave room for milk, sugar, cream, or whatever your guest might want to put into it. Say a centimeter and a half from the top.”

He shrugs and pours.

“In the world I grew up in, these sets would be made out of the finest and most expensive minerals or porcelain the family could afford. The number of snacks, the rarity of the tea, or coffee if you were really looking to lavish luxuries on someone, were all ways to show your guest your status, and how much you valued them.”

The set on Kylo’s table appears to be common black plasteel, but… Again, there’s no such thing as a proper Imperial High-Tea, not on the  _Supremacy_. Meanwhile, there is a lesson to this set, so Ellie’s set, made of a platinum-silver alloy, and handed down through her family for the last nine generations, is tucked away on her ship.

She takes her tea from Kylo, puts a block of sugar in, and adds a wedge of citronen. Rey, who’s never had tea, especially not like this, follows Ellie’s lead. Kylo takes his plain. It’s hot, he registers the temperature of the liquid more than a flavor, but after a few seconds he notices there’s some sort of herbal, cinnamon-y thing going on there. It’s not bad. He prefers coffee.

Ellie takes a sip, and then says, “Fifty years ago, you serving, by yourself, from this set, would have sent your guest into a panic. Care to guess why?”

Kylo and Rey both look at the set.

“It’s cheap?” Rey finally says, after a moment. She might not know tea sets, but she does know materials. If she’d found this and brought it to Plutt, it’d have been worth a few drops of water at most, so…

“Exactly. When your leader values you, when you are pleasing to him, he won’t serve you with cheap goods.” Ellie takes another sip, looks at Kylo, who stares at her, blinks a bit, and then gets it.

“Right,” he grabs one of the little plates.

“Good, top down, use the little tongs.”

“Okay… Uh…”

“One of the rabbit comfit sandwiches,” Ellie says, but there are five kinds of little sandwiches up there, and Kylo has no idea which is which by sight.

“The little one with the yellowish bread and the brown middle.”

He puts it on her plate, and looks back at the tower of treats.

“You eat your way down, and once the first round has been served, guest serve themselves, though it’s polite to offer to grab something for everyone else when you go for another of your own.”

He wiggles the tongs toward the top level, and Rey shrugs. She also doesn’t know what’s up there. He plops one of each on her plate, and does the same for himself.

“We don’t have to eat all of them if we don’t like them, right?” Rey asks.

“Not here. And you’re better off trying everything because variations on the theme of this will show up often. That said, if you’re a guest, unless you will literally throw it up, eat whatever it is you’re offered, or learn to hide the fact you aren’t eating it.”

Rey looks confused, and Kylo’s remembering some very unsuccessful attempts at hiding food under his plate as a small child.

“We’ll get into that lesson before you’re actually a guest at one of these things. Now, assuming we could locate a somewhat decent tea set, what would serving tea today mean?”

Again, neither Kylo nor Rey really want to hazard a guess, but… Ellie doesn’t look like she’s about to hop in and rescue them by answering, so…

“I’m actually attempting to live up to the Vader-fetish they whisper about?” Kylo tries.

Ellie sniggers at that. “Well, I suppose that’s one possible read on the subject, though to the best of my knowledge Lord Vader never presided over tea, or anything else that involved eating in public. Rey?”

Rey eyes the tea, eyes Ellie, and it’d be so easy, she could just read the feel of it off of her… And then she gets that’s part of the point of this. She’s  _supposed_ to read Ellie.

“It’s… about signaling that we’re out of the war years. That… the galaxy is ready to move back, or forward, I guess, to a time where people can do things like sit down and have tea. It’s… prosperity.  It’s… showing off that we’re… genteel…” she lifted that word right out of Ellie’s mind and isn’t sure what it means. “The New Republic didn’t do things like this because they thought it was a lavish waste, and looked too Imperial.” There’s another layer in there. “This is a palace… Or supposed to be one… And palaces have things like pretty meals to set people at ease and provide them comfort.”

Ellie’s smiling at her. “Exactly. And, of course, there’s more. Always more.” She pauses to sip her tea before saying, “The art of politics is fairly simple, at least at first blush. All you need to do is figure out what you want, and what the people around you want, and then use their wants to get your wants. And you two,” she flashes Rey and Kylo a knowing look, “have, shall we say, an  _advantage_  when it comes to figuring out what the people around you want.” Ellie smiles. “So  _use_ it. Get people together, get them comfortable and relaxed,” she takes a bite of her sandwich, and a sip of tea, “and  _learn._

“Most people act like politics is a complicated and obscure mire of hints and nuance. And it is,  _if you can’t read minds._ But, since you two  _can,_ the game suddenly shifts, and all you’ve got to do is figure out how to manipulate the wants of the people around you to get what you want.

“And once you know what the people around you want, manipulating them is  _easy._ ”

Ellie can see both of them are at least mildly horrified by her putting it that bluntly. She sighs. “Alderaan… That’s your image, isn’t it? Perfect, peaceful, rational, reasonable people working together in mutual accord for a greater good?”

That’s not exactly Kylo’s image, but it’s close. He can’t quite see it through his mother’s rose-tinted glasses, mostly because it’s her view of it, and he knows not to trust it. And Rey, who didn’t grow up with a fairy tale version of a world lost, still has that ideal of it, because, even though Kylo doesn’t trust the image, it’s  _still_  his image of it.

Ellie sighs. “Child, if your grandmothers were here… I knew Padme. Not well, but enough to chat on occasion. And I knew of Breha. Queen of Alderaan. Everyone knew of her. Breha would tell you mutual accord and the greater good are not real. She knew they were goals, something to be worked toward, not obtained. Padme didn’t know that, but she learned, and learning it broke her heart, I think. It certainly killed her. So, just delete those concepts from your mind. They do not exist. There is no Force-ordained perfect system. I’d assume, you two, of all people would know that, but…”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “I do.” And Rey nods along, too. They’ve both gotten the beyond shitty end of the Force stick in the past.

“So first and foremost, what do you want? That’s where this begins. You can be as lofty and fair as you like at this point, but keep it firmly in mind, this is what  _you_  want. There is no God behind you pushing and pulling you in the right direction. Or if there is, it’s the same God that rose up Snoke and Palaptine, or at least allowed them to rise, so keep that in mind. For all practical purposes, all there is is  _your own, personal_  sense of right and wrong, your own definition of justice, your own tolerance for pain, and what you’re personally willing to do, and who you’re personally willing to sacrifice, to get it. That’s it. No more, no less, and this will fly or fall entirely on the strength of your own will.

“That said, most of the people around you  _can’t read minds,_ which means they’re watching your every move, nuance, lifted eyebrow, the cut of your clothing, everything and anything for any hint of what you’re doing.” She touches her sandwich. “Does rabbit comfit over jam make a statement? Maybe? There’ll be people trying to decide if it does.

“So, for you two, you’re learning to speak the language of power more as a way to manage the message you send to those around you, than to pick up the messages they’re sending to you.

“For example, Kylo,  _no one_  has missed that you have no guards. This tells them two things. One: you are  _very_  confident in your ability to defend yourself and your home. Two: you don’t, not really, care about anything around you.” Ellie sits back as she says that, and then says, “Now, tell me, is that an accurate description of the situation?”

Kylo blinks. “I… absolutely can defend myself against pretty much any and everything that could be coming my way.” Then he glances at Rey, and she shakes her head.

“I am not being trailed by a horde of guards. I don’t need them.”

“The only person I won’t live without can take care of herself, and if need be I can be at her side in less than a heartbeat.”

Ellie takes note of Kylo’s phrasing on that, and then nods. “But they don’t know that. And I assume you prefer it that way.” Both of them nod. “And, if I understand correctly, you do have another home, hidden away, that no one knows the exact location of, and almost no one has been to.”

They nod.

Ellie smiles a bit. “So, you do understand the need to guard that which is precious. That said, the people around you see the lack of guards, especially on Rey, and think you may be reckless. You storming in, personally, to lead the attack on Qualee, cemented that idea. Whether you are reckless or not, you can use the fact that they see you that way to your advantage. By shaping the message you send, you also shape the ways they’ll try to interact with you.”

Rey watches her, and takes a nibble of her sandwich. Ellie only takes tiny bites, so she takes little ones, too. It’s yummy, lightly sweet and braced with some sort of acid. She thinks she’s got one of the jam ones. Then she says, “And you’ve got a message you’re thinking we should try to send?”

“Since we talked about Amidala at the First Year party… I have an idea, and Pat thinks it’s something we can capitalize on… that you two are ideally set to fill, should you want to do so. Though, I can certainly understand why you may decide not to.”

That gets an intrigued look from both Kylo and Rey.

“People have shapes, stories in their minds, narratives, and if you can take advantage of them, you can gently push them into directions that might be more to your liking than where they would otherwise go.” Ellie takes one more sip of her tea. “Over the course of the Last Night and the First Day parties, one thing Pat and I noticed is that there’s a narrative we can… use… to our benefit.

“Do you remember me saying that people like the idea of a God or Force-Ordained ruler, someone touched by the hand of the divine and given dominion over them?”

Kylo and Rey nod; they remember. They also remember Ellie saying, less than twenty minutes ago, that that was also not a thing that existed in the real world.

“People do like that. In addition to that, many, many people have a story in their minds. A tale of a handsome prince, and his beautiful lady, and the many trials and tribulations they go through in order to win each other, but in the end, they do, and they get married, and they rule justly, to the benefit of all they rule, and everyone lives happily ever after.”

Kylo  _immediately_  sees where this is going, because he did have nannies who told him those stories. He even liked them, as a child. Probably because, in several cases those stories were supposed to be about his Grandparents: Breha and Bail Organa.

Rey’s getting the idea, too. She didn’t have those stories, not growing up, because she didn’t grow up in a world of stories, but she understands what Ellie’s saying.

“You want us to be… The Handsome Prince and his Lady?” Kylo asks. He gets the idea, but he’s never even come close to thinking about applying it to him… them.

She looks to Kylo. “You’re pretty enough for the job.” Kylo looks skeptical about that, and Ellie brushes it away. “You outed yourself, so you are, and the galaxy knows it, a  _literal_  prince. Of Alderaan. And given how the New Republic spent thirty years covering the galaxy with pro-Alderaan propaganda, just about everyone thinks it was practically Heaven, unjustly destroyed by those monsters in the Empire, so  _many_ people automatically associate it with justice and honor, and good government. You have the birthright for this. You have the  _ideal_ birthright for this. Pat and I could have spent years setting this up, and we could not have come up with a better background for this plan if we tried. And believe me, we  _did._ ”

She looks to Rey. “Again, you’re more than pretty enough for it. Normally, it’s the Prince who does the rescuing in these stories, but… If we let it out that you were part of the Resistance, and he was the First Order, and we shape it as an epic romance, finding each other on the battlefield or something like that, pulling together, entwined by destiny, you bringing him to the light, him bringing you dark, the fall of the First Order and the Jedi, and bringing about something new, The Order of the Maji…

“If we shape it right, people will flock to you, just to be near that story. To wear our colors and be part of the romance of a love story so powerful it changed the entire galaxy. They’ll write stories and songs and holovids about it. You’ll be celebrities.”

And that’s where Ellie stops, to let those ideas seep in, and to her credit she does give it time, as Kylo and Rey sit there, next to each other, contemplating the idea of being…  _famous._

The first flush of contemplating is both of them just looking at her, somewhat stunned expressions on their faces.

 

 

That then settles down into what Ellie would consider an  _is this possible?_ sort of expression, this one aimed at each other as they contemplate the idea further.

And they do contemplate. Long enough to munch through several of the tiny sandwiches, and a few of the… Rey’s not sure what they are, savory pastries that get rubbed with creams and jams, on the level below them.

It’s Rey who says it, and Kylo’s grateful for that, because he doesn’t feel like he can. Though it’s clear that Ellie’s surprised to see Rey’s the one who voices the question.

“How would we… do that?”

Ellie looks around… “I’m not sure if we’d start here, because, of course, this is the real world, and we are on a budget, but it’s the thing that’s glaringly obvious to me, because we’re sitting in the middle of it.” She gestures to the room around them, and the  _Supremacy_  at large. “Kylo, it’s  _all black_. You look like you asked for a torture dungeon, not the hub of a new political regime. Even the Emperor, who wasn’t exactly  _subtle_  when it came to décor schemes, didn’t live in an  _all black room_ on and  _all black_   _ship_ with an  _all black wardrobe_.”

Kylo does lift an arm, showing off that Jon’s latest version of his command blacks does in fact contain some gray on the sleeve.

Ellie loudly thinks  _smartass_ at him, before saying, “The fantasy prince and princess live in a palace. A place of beauty, and learning, art, music. It’s smack dab in the middle of the most prosperous, beautiful city to ever be built. Now, there’s not much we can do to make the  _Supremacy_ look, at least on the outside, beautiful and nonthreatening. The inside is a different story.”

“Jon and I talk about building palaces. And, we’ve got dreadnoughts in process. New ships to scale down some, and built to be beautiful.”

“Good. That’s a good start, but you’re what… ten years out on them?”

“Four and a quarter.”

And while that’s better than Ellie was thinking, that’s also not  _now._ “Much better, but  _something_  has to happen with any parts of the  _Supremacy_  you intend to work/entertain in.”

“What kind of something?” Rey asks.

Ellie thinks about it for a moment. “I could probably describe all day and not really get the idea across. I know he’s at least seen some examples of what an attractive, elegant, functional sort of place looks like. I don’t know if you have.

“I have my own ship, and free time. If you want to take the lesson further, how about we go visit some palaces?”

“How?” Rey asks. “We don’t just… go, right?”

Ellie smiles at her. “That’s  _exactly_ what you do. You are the Lady Ren of the Order, Mistress Rey of the Maji, and I’m not exactly yesterday’s waste. If we request a visit, we will be offered the height of hospitality.” She shifts focus to Kylo. “You have to have people you want to get to know better… Places that could use a visit from the queen of the Order…”

Off the top of his head, he’s got nothing, but… “Wait. New Alderaan. We’re delivering a non-aggression pact to them. Rey and you delivering it… That would… look good right?”

Ellie smirks a bit. “Sending your Queen to visit your Mother’s people, who are a matriarchy famous for peace, with the first draft of a binding peace agreement in her hands? Yes, Kylo, that looks good. Would you like to do that, Rey?”

Rey’s still wrapping her head around the idea of this. “Just… Go to New Alderaan? Just the two of us?”

“Normally we’d have some people to tend to us, and a few guards, but we can likely get away with the two of us, and assuming he’s a Grand Marshal by the time we leave, Jon, or better yet, General Threepio, who I believe has been there before on more than one occasion…”

“Threepio,” Kylo says, understanding what they’re doing here. “You’re going to absolutely convince them that I AM the heir to their throne, and then we’re just going to… leave them be?”

Ellie smiles a little. “Well, you do happen to have a policy in place encouraging anyone who would wish to join you to do so. If they want Prince Ben of Alderaan,” Kylo winces a bit at that, and Ellie pointedly ignores it, “they know where to find him, and how to join his service. You have a program for acquiring planets. If they decide taking advantage of it at some future point would be to their benefit, who are you to tell them ‘no?’”

She’s not wrong about that, and if New Alderaan ever does decide to move into the sway of the Order, he won’t tell them no.

“So, go, look, see, get an idea of what palaces look like, and… then what?” Kylo asks.

“Well, is there an epic romance hiding in there somewhere? Do we have a Prince and Princess to stick in a palace if we build one? Pat tells me the two of you killed Snoke together. Jon tells me she’s the one who put that scar on your face. You’ve told Mirina that he kidnapped you… So… I have the feeling that there’s a story we can…” she gestures elegantly, looking pointedly at the two of them, “polish a bit, and make people want to get close to.”

 

 

Both Rey and Kylo glance at each other.

“How?” Rey says. “Not how do we polish it… How do we spread it around? More than five or ten people at a time.”

“Good question. Lots of people will want to know more about you, so… We have interviewers and channels that play news, if you were to  _talk to them_  other people would watch those things, and get to know more about you.”

Again, they both look at each other. Just sitting around talking about themselves is uncomfortable and somewhat off-putting.

Ellie continues on. “People love a great love story. It draws them in, makes them want to be part of the drama, makes them see you as  _people_ , so… We can work with this.”

Kylo’s rubbing his lips together. He’s not sure if the two of them qualify as a ‘great romance.’ At least, he doesn’t remember some of their experiences ever popping up in the stories he saw as a child. His sarcasm comes up to go with, “And do we leave out the part where I blow up her home planet, or she cuts my face in half…”

Ellie’s unfazed by that. “That’s going to be up to you. I think the real question is: do you want to create a version of the past that’s engaging and optimistic, preferably with a sense of great passion and purpose, and then use it, and when you’re in public,  _be it,_  as a way to encourage people into feeling like joining you is a moral imperative?”

Rey and Kylo glance at each other, and Ellie continues. “Let’s take Jakku. Everyone who is paying attention knows that you blew Jakku to pieces. Fewer than ten know why. The official story is that Hux used it as a test of concept for the City Killers, and in that it was out of the way, didn’t have too many people on it, and had housed a decent number of Resistance members over the years, made for a good target.

“That is  _not_  an unreasonable story. It may even be a good one. It’s  _absolutely_ a  _believable_  one. And as long as where you come from, Rey, never gets out, that story will hold.”

Rey and Kylo can both feel the unspoken:  _How long do you think it will hold?_

Rey shrugs. “Maybe ten people know I’m from Jakku.”

“And are you certain they can keep the secret?”

She winces. “Tasha Spiner?”

“It’ll be out in a matter of years. She doesn’t talk freely, spreading secrets around willy-nilly, but there will be a situation where it will be to her advantage to pass that on. That’s just the nature of the game. The only way to neuter the value of a secret is to spill it. So, you know it will come out, which means now you get to sit down and figure out how best to shape the story to your liking. What provides you with the greatest benefit?”

Neither of them are entirely sure about that.

“How would you shape it?” Rey asks.

“Let me make sure I understand the truth, at least the way you do. Tell me the story…”

They look at each other, and Rey begins, “Shortly before the battle of Crait, we noticed that we could sense/see each other through the Force.”

“From light years away. Snoke claimed he was bridging our minds to each other, but neither of us believes that, and the bridge didn’t falter when I killed him… so… If he set it up, he set it up better than any Force spell before or since,” Kylo adds.

He holds her hand, giving her a little squeeze, letting her have the next bit. “Because the Force has a sense of humor, it thought that linking us to each other when he was somewhat naked would be fun.” Ellie smirks a bit at that. “The issue is, though, at that point, I wasn’t exactly fond of, or comfortable with, somewhat naked men.” She bites her lip, but just says it, banishing some of the power the words hold over her. “I was raped, several times, over the years, when I lived on Jakku. My parents sold me there, proceeded to run off, and then drink themselves to death, and the man who bought me cared for nothing other than the junk I could bring in. He offered no protection, and when I got old enough to be interesting to some of the men, they took advantage.”

Ellie blinks and nods.

“I didn’t tell him that story. Likely wouldn’t have, not for a long time, but, our minds are bridged, so when the Force flashes us to each other, and he’s butt naked in the refresher, shaving, and he’s getting annoyed because I keep asking him to put clothing on, and he doesn’t want me to think he’s repulsive…”

“It wasn’t quite that. I could live with you not liking the things I’d done. I didn’t like a lot of the things I’d done over the years, too. But you were comfortable with me when I was dressed, but not naked, and… I didn’t think there was any shot we were going anywhere like where we are now, but… I didn’t want my body to be monstrous to you.”

Rey’s expression indicates she doesn’t think that’s much of a distinction. “He snapped out something like: ‘It’s just skin; you’ve got it, too,’”

He glances to Ellie to explain. “Because I was tired, and annoyed, still drowning in dark, and it was one of the few moments of the day when I got to be something like a human, and that bothered you…”

“And I didn’t answer, but the memories came streaking back, and he felt them.”

“And immediately put on a shirt.”

“ _Only_ a shirt.”

“You only asked me to put on a shirt! I didn’t know how much you could see.”

“All of it.”

“Well, then you should have asked me to put on some pants or something.”

“Once you had a shirt on, there was something I could focus on other than kilometers of white skin.”

Ellie is continuing to happily smirk away at this exchange. She’s sure if she can get an interviewer with them, the public will eat this up.

Kylo half inclines his head, and then takes over on the story, “She flashed back out, I was alone in my refresher, and being the calm, reasonable person I was a few weeks after the battle of Crait, I got Hux and some engineers together, had them wire battering ram cannons onto bombers, and blew the planet into chunks, shooting every ship that tried to leave down in the process.”

Rey hadn’t known that part of it. “No one got off?”

He shakes his head. “No one.” There still some savage satisfaction in his voice as he says that. Then he looks to Ellie. “So, how do you spin that? I went into a completely inappropriate homicidal rage because a girl I had spoken to maybe half a dozen times was abused a decade before I met her.”

Rey’s also curious to see Ellie’s take on the matter.

Ellie meanwhile studies both of them. She doesn’t curse, a lot, but when she does it carries that much extra emphasis. “Well, I’d set it up like this: Do not  _fuck_ ” she enunciates it clear and sharp, “with Master Ren, or anything he cares about. I’d keep two things in play, no regrets. Everything you have ever done is something you intended to do and it worked out  _exactly_  how you wanted it to. Regrets are for your private life, and your memoirs. And two: you are the ultra-protector and you will utterly  _destroy_  anything or one that has ever done you or yours wrong.

“There’s a substantial portion of the population that is small, terrified, lonely, and  _craves_ the idea that somehow, someone will care enough about them to rage for them. We are selling a  _fantasy_ version of the two of you, and every year  _billions_ of stories get sold about great romances where one of the two of them goes on a stupidly over-protective binge of murder and mayhem to avenge or protect the other one.  _As a fantasy,_  people  _adore_  the idea of it. As long as you don’t then go out and do  _more_  of it, using it as a way to build the image of an eternal, undying, passionate, attached love will work just fine.

“And, if we set this up, people who are ‘realists’ will decide that this is you two being ‘romantic’ and ‘prettying’ up the image of the great Kylo-Rey relationship, making it more dramatic, and that, in reality, you were likely just looking for a good spot for a weapons test, and you’re probably lying about being from Jakku anyway.” Ellie glances to Rey, “Do you know your family? At all?”

Rey shakes her head.

“And you haven’t searched yourself in the register?”

“No.”

“Do it. Information that exists, that you don’t control, is a problem. As soon as it goes wide that you are an orphan, your ‘parents,’ siblings, cousins, all manner of long-lost family will come out of the ethers. In the case of ‘parents’ some of them are going to be heartbroken people who had a tiny, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl stolen from them, and they  _desperately_  want her to have grown-up strong and pretty, married a prince, and now helps to rule the largest military in the galaxy. That’s the  _best_ possible outcome for these people, and they will come in  _droves_ to try and prove you are theirs.”

Rey sighs. She wants that, too. Just the idea of it lights her up. Somewhere, there are people who weren’t useless drunks, who loved their little girl, and some idiots took her and sold her on a backwater in the middle of nowhere.

Kylo squeezes her hand, then kisses it, feeling how much she hopes there are some people out there who have been looking for their baby girl for decades now.

Ellie can see it, too, and gently says, “And if the registers turns up nothing, you’re going to have to decide what you want to do with the people who are begging the gods, the Force, and the Universe that you are theirs. Because they are going to come. And so are the status seekers, the con artists, the scum of the universe. Some of them will just be happy to talk to the local tattle sheet, and claim whatever they can about you. I’m sure Kylo’s aware of the fact that every year for the last decade there have been stories about “I’m Kylo Ren’s birth mother…”

Kylo’s staring at her blankly.

“No?” Ellie’s genuinely shocked by that.

He shakes his head. “No.” He swallows. “People have been claiming to be my family for years?”

“Not as much before you became the  _Supreme Leader,_ but after, quite a bit.”

He blinks at that. “I didn’t know that.”

“Ah… Well… the Leia Organa’s son story is circling, so that’s starting to quell the other rumors. Though I’m sure a  _lot_ of stories about who your father might be are going to start up soon.”

“My mother’s husband?” Kylo asks, voice dry.

Ellie offers him a lop-sided smile. “Honey, your mother never publically claimed Kylo Ren as hers. Not that I know of. The only legal child she ever had was Ben Solo. He vanished from the public eye more than twenty years ago. He’s been gone for so long, no one knows if you’re him or not. On top of that, your father wasn’t exactly tied at the hip to your mother. If memory serves, he dropped off the scanners more than a decade ago, and even before that, sightings of him were rare. Honestly, without you saying it, I didn’t know they were married.”

That makes Kylo blink, because as best he can tell if a thing can be known, Ellie Kinear would have known it.

“Part of it is that you don’t exactly look much like either of them. If you  _really_ look, and you also  _really_  looked at Organa and Solo, you can see a bit of it, more in how you move than in your actual physical features, but… I’m certain stories of the bastard love child of Senator Organa and whomever else in the New Republic with black hair and dark eyes will be flying through the galaxy soon. She had a lot of friends over the years and many close confidants. And, unless you wish to  _publicly_  reclaim the name of Ben Organa-Solo, which our Alderaan trip should start to do, they aren’t going to stop.”

“And is this where you tell me that retaking that name will be complicated, too? Beyond looking good for Alderaan.”

“See, you’re getting the hang of this,” Ellie says with a smirk while Rey pets Kylo. “At the most basic level, Han Solo is, I believe, still wanted in over 200 systems. And I have the feeling that he still owes money to an army of people, who will likely be interested in trying their luck with you.”

“And I suppose if I grab them, toss them in my brig, and hold them for bounty hunters, my ‘neutral space initiative’ will suffer?” Kylo says, voice dry.

“It’s likely people will be somewhat less interested in coming to do business with you. Of course, if you have a find them, grab them, hold them and release to the highest bidder policy, that can get you into an entirely different line of work. Which I understand is lucrative as well.”

“I have a feeling  _The Supremacy_  can offer more value by letting anyone come here to deal in whatever it is they like.” If Kylo’s right about this, there are more scoundrels than scoundrel catchers out there. And scoundrels need a place to do business.

Ellie sips her tea. “I suppose if you just grab the first few who are stupid enough to try you for settling Han Solo’s debts, word will spread fairly quickly that when the last song is done, all debts are settled.”

Rey glances to Kylo and thinks:  _Or we could actually settle them, assuming we can afford them, and it buys Chewie his freedom._

 _Assuming Chewie says they actually owe those people. If it gets out we’re paying off Han Solo’s debts,_ everyone _in the galaxy is going to show up claiming he owes them._

Rey smirks.  _And about half of them will be telling the truth._

Kylo snorts a quick laugh.

Ellie shakes her head. “Don’t do that in public. It’s rude to have private conversations in front of another person. So, either keep your thoughts in place until later, or school your faces so others don’t know you’re mentally chatting.”

“We’re working on that,” Rey says.

“Work faster,” Ellie replies. She nibbles a cookie. “That probably brings us to the next big issue. Everyone knows that Kylo is some sort of Force user. Between the fact that you have, apparently, in public,” she sounds exasperated at this, “told people you can read minds, to the battle on Qualee Prime, where people watched you stop blaster bolts, to your pulling out chairs with the Force trick, they  _know_ you can use the Force.

“They don’t know that about  _you_ ,” she says to Rey. “They do know, or will, about the Maji. Speaking of things an interview or two could help spread… But since what you’ve said about it doesn’t confirm that it require Force skills, or if, like the Church of the Force, it’s open to everyone, they are less certain about you. So, this is your opportunity to decide how much of your own skill set you want to let shine.”

“And you would suggest?” Rey says.

“Absolutely  _do not_  let people know you read minds. Keep that secret to your grave.” She looks to Kylo, “I would have told you to do that, too, and if you have the opportunity to hedge that story, do so. Most people don’t know that’s a Force skill period, so shut up about it, and use it as subtly as you can.”

“Hedge it how?” Kylo asks.

“Suggest you can read feelings, or only if you really concentrate, or anything you can think of to make it clear that you cannot eavesdrop on someone’s thoughts like you’re sitting next to them in a restaurant while they’re having a conversation…” It’s clear from the look on Ellie’s face, she’s curious as to what Kylo actually can do in that regard.

“I can feel strong emotions. And I can’t  _read_ minds or hear thoughts. It’s… very much not sitting next to someone in a restaurant.”

Rey keeps her face clear and thinks to him  _liar._

He also keeps his face straight, and thinks back,  _I’m hedging._

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Honey, don’t even try it on me. You are  _not_ a good enough liar to pull it off, even if you weren’t having a little chat with Rey about it.” Both of them are looking irked at her. “Okay, homework assignment. Sit in front of a mirror and  _watch_ carefully what you do with your faces when you talk to each other. Then watch what you do when you’re not having a conversation. Yes, both of you did a good job of not looking like you were having a conversation, but both of your faces went flat, which was too far of a correction in the opposite direction.”

That gets more sighing.

“Also, if you know any good liars, and for the record that is absolutely Pat and I, listen, feel, and  _watch_  what we do. We can have lessons where both of us will intentionally lie to you, and I know both of you can  _feel_ the lie, but I want you to watch how we tell it. People who can catch one of us in a lie are very few and very far between, and likely either have  _some_ Force skills, or are professionals in interrogation, politics, trial law, or gambling.”

“Mirina Frakes can tell when you lie, can’t she?” Kylo asks.

That stops Ellie short. Her expression shifts, and for a second they catch her  _this is valuable information_ face. “Interesting question there. Why do you ask?”

“She’s mildly Force sensitive. All unconscious, all untrained, but I’m sure people have an easy time chatting with her, and Jon says a good chunk of what she does is giving people what they want, or if what they want is a terrible idea, making them want something good. That’s extremely low level Force coercion.”

Ellie grins at that. “Oh, she’ll be… interested, to hear that.”

“Good interested or bad interested?” Kylo asks.

“Well, you could go have a chat with her about that yourself. And… I would suggest that as long as she is here on your ship—“

“You mean the foreseeable future?” Kylo asks. “She and Jon have been around to talk about this.”

Ellie nods.

Rey can feel what Ellie isn’t saying. “Status isn’t the only thing Mirina has on offer, is it?”

“Only if you’re not smart enough to attempt to make an ally of her.”

“We talked,” Kylo says. “She might be warming up to me, because of what I can do for Jon. But she hates me because of what she thinks I did to her husband.”

Ellie gives him a non-flustered look. “Change her mind. Or take advantage of the fact that you,” she’s talking to Rey, “and her have a clean slate. You have enemies, Kylo, nothing can be done about that. You do not, Rey, at least not ones that matter. There will be times when sending Rey in will be the better course. This may be one of them. Still, if you can, get Mirina Frakes on your side. She’s got an unparalleled eye for the details, and is better at getting people to open up and talk about things they shouldn’t than anyone else.”

“Like I said, she’s warming up to me because of what I can likely do for Jon, or set him up for. We’d likely get along, other than the fact that she holds me responsible for the death of her husband.”

Ellie’s utterly un-fazed by that. “You are responsible for the deaths of billions of people, Kylo. You need to be able to figure out how to get people to look past that and work with you anyway.”

“I didn’t blow up the Hosnian system!”

Ellie sighs at that. “It really doesn’t matter. Get this firmly in your head: you will be blamed for any bad thing the First Order, the Empire, the Rebellion, and the Resistance  _ever_  did. The fact that you are somehow the literal heir to  _both_  side of the war that’s been going on for the last seventy years means that there are trillions of people who will hold you personally accountable for  _something_  someone did that was entirely outside of your power, and possibly occurred before you were born.

“Learn to use it.”

“How?” Kylo sounds exasperated at that.

“ _That’s_  why we’re here. And that’s us wrapping back around to our handsome prince and his lovely lady. You are the heir of all the problems in the galaxy, Kylo. More or less. And you’re nobody, from nowhere, completely outside the drama, Rey. And one day, somehow, you two found each other, and you rescued him from the dark/light/power/corruption… fill in the blank however you like, and together, the two of you are breaking with the past, shattering it, and starting fresh and new. That’s the promise of the Order, a fresh start to anyone who wants it, and you two, personally will be the symbol of that. The idea that love frees us from our bonds, gives us the strength to break away from what’s dominated us, and then gives us hope to conceptualize a better life, and the will to go get it. That’s the fantasy we’re going to write up and sell to the entire galaxy, if you two want to claim it.

“And the best way to sell that fantasy, to pick it up and work it for all it’s worth, is the biggest, brightest, most lavish wedding anyone’s ever seen.

“Spruce this place up, make it glitter, and both of you, inside of it, sparkling away, glowing and lovey the way you were at the Last Night dinner. That gives you plenty of reason to tell the story, more reason to show where the story leads, and it will cement the idea of this as a glittering palace in space, centered on the most fabulous love story ever, where people will come to work with each other, and reach peace and accord. You’ll be the living embodiment of conflict turning to love turning to a flourishing society with a vibrant future. We can build this story, and we can sell it, and if you are willing to put yourselves on display like this, we can cement the power of the Order with a minimum of bloodshed.”

Ellie knows that’s a lot to take in, so she takes one more sip of her tea, then then says, “And now I want both of you to get out of here, and do something that you, personally, find enjoyable. Don’t think about this, don’t mull on, don’t talk about it. Just go do something fun, with each other. And tomorrow, start thinking and talking. Tonight, have a good dinner, go see a show, walk the promenade, read a fun novel, make love, whatever it is you enjoy, and then tomorrow, have a good think and a chat.”

That’s the first time either of them has ever been ordered to have a good time. But Ellie’s not quite done. “Except for the Alderaan thing. Don’t think about that. We’re going to do that. It’s not up for debate, because that’s a really good idea. And I’m thinking, that in the not wildly distant future, Rey and I are going to spend a bit of time touring Naboo, too. We’ll think of some official reason to go there that doesn’t have anything to do with Padme Amidala, but we absolutely will go.

“As for the rest of it, think about.”

Then Ellie grins, and gestures to the door of Kylo’s rooms. “Go out there, do something fun, and let them see you doing something fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you look carefully, that's C8 holding the tea tray in the second shot. (Dang black robot in a black room, holding a black tea tray. He's there, I swear.) We'll see more of him soonish.


	10. Fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, as I'm sure you all guessed last week, this installment is vibrantly NSFW.

1/20/2

“So, what’s something  _fun?_ ” Rey asks as they wander across the  _Supremacy._

Something fun. Go out. Let people see you. Have  _fun._

Well, they eat. There is food on the F-Deck. So, they’re off in search of step one of Mission: Have Fun. Namely, they’re going to eat, together, in public.

It’s one of the handful of times they’ve been out, Kylo without his do-not-recognize spell, just walking. He’s in his casual blacks, and she’s in one of her hanyifus. This one is beige with bits of green on the cuffs and hems. The fabric is shinier than anything she’d have picked for herself, but it’s also  _really_ soft, and obviously Jon thought it looked appropriate, so…

Go out, have fun, look like… Lady Ren, or at least a spiffier version of Rey… or something.

They’re holding hands. And people are definitely  _looking._

Kylo smirks at her.  _I know what I consider fun._

She rolls her eyes a bit.  _Yes, well we were told to do something fun,_ in addition  _to that._

His smirk widens. Then he says, with his voice, since this is a conversation other people can overhear. “I guess, we could go see a show.”

“Do they have shows here?”

“I can’t imagine she’d have suggested it if they don’t.”

“Fair point.”

He’s looking around them. Shops and restaurants line the halls. In between them are benches, tables, and chairs, throngs of people seeking dinner, and small carts selling drinks and snacks. He doesn’t see what he’s looking for, but… “I think they have at least one cinema somewhere on the F-Deck.”

She glances up at him, curious. “I don’t know what a cinema is.”

Kylo purses his lips. He hasn’t actually seen one, either, though when he and the Knights got to the  _Finalizer_ , Kammun sought one out and told him about it. “Kind of like a play, but instead of live in front of you, it’s recorded on a holo or sim projection, and you sit back and watch it.”

Rey thinks about it as they walk, both of them aware of the eyes on them. Kylo nudges a bit closer to her, draping his arm over her shoulder, not caring if it looks like he’s trying to protect her. Maybe sending the signal that there is at least one thing on this ship he adores is worthwhile.

She gives him a little squeeze, her arm wrapping around his waist, and then she pauses for a second, raising her face to his, and he gives her a quick kiss. It might have been a longer one, but they can both feel the wave of shock, and they hear the people around them going silent.

 _It’s not_ that  _shocking, is it?_ Rey thinks to him.

He half shrugs. They can both feel the people around them responding to it.  _I think it’s more that it’s_ me,  _as opposed to this isn’t something couples do in public._

She nods at that, looking around, and it’s true, they aren’t the only people close and touching as they walk. She also notices, as she really  _feels_  the people around them, that a lot of them, even the shocked ones,  _approve_  of this.

_Do you think there might be some version of the sort of story Ellie’s talking about? At the cinema?_

He doesn’t physically shrug. He’s not looking at her at all, working on his mental conversation without giving it away face.  _If she’s right about billions of them being sold a year, I’d imagine there would have to be, but… Again, I’m not even entirely sure if we’ve got a cinema._

_Any idea how we’d find out?_

_I’d imagine that’s information C8 can access._

_So… shall we see a show?_

He smiles at her, and kisses the top of her head. “I’d like that.” They take a few more steps, and then Rey says, “Dinner?”

Kylo nods. “Dinner.”

 

* * *

Dinner is easier said than done. As of this point in time, they’ve had exactly one meal, in public, as Master Ren and Rey of the Maji, and not only did they host that one, but the menu was chosen ahead of time, and it was served to them by a slew of droids.

This is not that.

In the kilometer long market section of the F-deck they’re currently in, there are forty-three sit down restaurants or cafes, another sixty-eight stand up places, and close to a hundred food carts.

Just  _picking_  something is a daunting task.

A daunting task made somewhat trickier by the fact that every time they try to get close enough to a place to see a menu, one of two things happens: if it’s the sort of place people are standing in line, they go sprinting away. After all, it wouldn’t do to be the person to make Master and his companion to have to wait in line. Or, if it’s a sit down place, everyone goes silent and stares, and both of them can feel the manager/owner/chef whomever is in charge, silently begging them to either come in or run away, depending on how good they think the food is that night.

At the fifth place where the man at the door is more or less begging them to come in as they look at the posted menu and the patrons who are already seated are all watching them, Kylo thinks to Rey,  _Being_ seen _is overrated._

She makes herself not smile, makes herself keep reading the menu.  _You’re right about that. I have a feeling that whatever fun is for us, it doesn’t involve being recognized._

_Amen._

_Amen?_

_It’s how Wookies end prayers. Means something like, so let it be._

_Amen, then. So, we going to make the… what is he?_ Rey eyes the man watching them intently from just on the other side of the glass door. He’s all but vibrating with desire to see them enter.

_Owner, I think._

_Really happy and eat something here?_

The menu looks fine. If it were coming to his room and he could eat it in private, Kylo’d even be enthusiastic about it. Out here with everyone else, he’s feeling tepid at best.

“Sure,” he opens the door, and a beaming smile spreads across the owners face.

“Master Ren! Mistress… Welcome!” He ushers them to a table toward the front windows, and then pauses, “Do you prefer to be seen or something private?”

It’s a fairly small place. Only a dozen tables and a bar at the back. Kylo’s not sure what private may be here, but…

“Private, if you have it,” Rey says.

And a moment later, the owner is leading them back, behind the bar, to… “Oh,” Rey’s looking at a tiny space off of the kitchen. There’s a table and some sort of shelf with plants on it and not much else. The table isn’t set, and Rey’s getting the idea that part of the reason the man was so eager for them to come in is that this room is empty.

“We occasionally do private parties, or intimate dinners here,” the owner says with a smile. “Please, sit, be comfortable. We’ll get it set up in a heartbeat,” and then he’s out of there, leaving the two of them in a small room with a table and four chairs.

“Okay, this isn’t bad,” Kylo says, sitting down. Rey nods, looking around. There are paintings on the walls of a place she doesn’t know, and unfortunately there are no words on the paintings so she can’t figure it out.

Kylo can feel what she’s wondering and shakes his head. “I don’t know, either. I’m sure he’d be happy to tell us about it if we asked.”

Rey joins him, sitting on his lap, letting him stroke her back. She closes her eyes and rests against him for a moment. Then she says, “I bet asking about it is the sort of thing that goes with being  _human_  and  _approachable_.”

He kisses the top of her head. “Ellie would probably approve.”

“Probably.” She sits up so she can look at the pictures easily. “You know what the annoying bit it?”

 

 

He knows, but he asks anyway. Sometimes  _talking_  matters. “What?”

“I would have asked without thinking, but now I can’t not think about it, so I’ve got to decide if this is something I’m supposed to do, instead of just doing it.”

He holds her close, and kisses her again. “Welcome to my life.”

“I didn’t get the sense that was part of it you enjoyed.”

“Not particularly.” He sighs a little. “According to Luke, this is part of being aware of other people. Knowing that they have wants and needs and desires all their own. Not knowing immediately what you’re supposed to do is part of taking the people around you into consideration. He thought it was a good thing. Something about only cocksure fools think they’re doing the right thing all the time.”

“He was thinking about your dad when he said that, wasn’t he?”

“Mom actually, and he was really trying not to.” Kylo says with a bit of a smile. It wasn’t funny at the time, but now… He’s about to expound on that a bit more, when two people rush into the room, one with a bundle of… stuff… and the other with a bottle of something, and a plate with some sort of food on it.

They both stop the second they get into the room, like they didn’t believe their boss when he said the Master and his lady were in the private room. They do now.

Then the one with the bundle gets to work, fast. She says something, also fast and under her breath. Neither of them can really hear, but they get the idea. Rey stands up, and Kylo pushes back from the table.

She lays out a cloth, and cutlery, and glasses, and small plates, and… “I haven’t seen one of them in years,” Kylo says. He knows Rey’s never seen one. It’s an actual wax candle that she lights, setting a small flame dancing on the table for them.

She nods, fast, and then darts away from them, blushing.

The other lady has the plate with the food on it, and places it on the table. “Appetizer salad. This is a collection of nibbles from the chef to whet the palate while you decide what you want.” Then she uncorks the bottle of… it’s got to be wine by the scent, and pours each of them a glass, unasked. “Valkierian Garnet Hyssop, BB… Uh…” It’s clear she’s fumbling with translating the date into Order standard.

Kylo waves that away. “Neither of us drink enough wine to be able to tell one planet from another, let alone harvest year.”

Rey’s looking at the deep red, almost black liquid in her glass. “I take it this is special?”

That puts the server at ease. “Yes, Mistress. Myrkle’s,” that has to be the name of the boss, “family ran that vineyard for more than three hundred years. This is one of the few surviving bottles.”

“What happened to the vineyard?” Rey asks.

Kylo has a pretty good idea. The date on the bottle is from the Old Republic Era.

“It was nationalized by the Empire, my lady. Turned to… food production. They didn’t see any reason to let good land ‘go to waste’ on ‘fripperies’ when grain prices were too high.”

“Oh,” Rey says. She turns to the pictures on the walls around them, and some of them are of vines on sloping hills. “Is that Valkieria?”

“It is.”

“And the food?” Kylo asks.

“As much as can be had here.” She jerks a little, “Oh,” and scurries out, and is back a moment later with the menus. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rey says.

Kylo doesn’t look at the menus. “Have Myrkle make us whatever it is he enjoys eating. Whatever means home to him.” He touches the bottle of wine. “Something that goes with this.”

The waitress smiles at them. “He’s going to like that. Can I get you anything else?”

Rey shakes her head, and Kylo says, “Not right now.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a bit to check on you,” and then she leaves.

The food on the plate is not what Rey thinks of as a salad. There doesn’t appear to be any fresh vegetables to start with. Though there are cured meats, some sort of cheeses, dried berries, a paste of some sort, small bits of bread, and pickles.

Rey’s looking at the wine, nervously. “Do you think we’ll insult him horribly if we don’t finish the bottle?”

Kylo hadn’t thought of that. “I hope not.” He picks up his glass and takes a sniff. “Smells good.”

Rey’s skeptical of that. Every wine she’s smelled has made her think of rotting grapes.

“No, really, try it,” he says as he takes a taste. “Tastes pretty good, too.”

A tentative sniff tells her that this doesn’t smell like rotting grapes. Doesn’t smell like alcohol, either. “It smells… red.”

That’s as good a word as he’s going to come up for it, so why not. “Smells like it’s color. Deep, brilliant garnet.”

“Black with a glowing heart,” she touches his hand, and wonders idly if this is intentional or not. Then she tries a sip. It’s not unpleasant. It doesn’t taste like the few swallows of wine she’s had before. It actually doesn’t taste like much of anything. It’s more a  _feel_  in her mouth, round, supple, almost dry yet somehow wet, and again a glowing red dulled through a veil of black.

Kylo nods, feeling her taste it, and then he picks up one of the little pieces of bread, and puts a bit of cheese and some of the dried fruits on it. “I’ve seen my mother do this. I think. It was a long time ago.”

“So, little pre-dinner sandwiches?”

“I think so. Just one piece of bread, though.”

Rey lays a thin slice of some sort of meat on one of the little, hard, dried breads, and then takes a nibble. It’s another bite of food she more feels than tastes. Salty and rich, that’s the first hit, then a sort of soft, supple fattiness as the meat… melts… but it’s meat so it can’t really melt, but it feels that way, on her tongue.

It’s good with the wine.

Better with a bit of cheese and one of the dried berries on top.

Rey looks at the bottle. She can read the date on it, but doesn’t know Old Republic to Imperial to New Republic to Order. “How old do you think it is?”

Kylo just shrugs. He tries a piece of hard cheese with some of the honey. That’s good, too. He gives her the other bite of it, and Rey nods.

As she’s chewing, he says, “If it was vinted by Jedi monks, and they put their old dates on it, I’d have a shot, but… I don’t remember what the Old Republic calendar was at when they turned to Imperial Era 1.”

She swallows. “At least fifty years old.”

“At least fifty years old.” Kylo glances around at the images on the walls. Rolling hills, vineyards, fat and happy animals lazing about in the sunshine, nibbling the grapes. Maybe they’re the source of the meat and cheese. “Luke talked, a little, about the Empire nationalizing farms. Once, he mentioned that if Artoo hadn’t shown up, and kicked off his quest for Leia, and then that kicked off the Rebellion finally winning, he likely would have still been on Tatooine, waiting for the Empire to show up.”

“Why were they doing it?”

“Supposedly too many people, and not enough food. Part of what the Rebellion was rebelling against was starvation conditions on a lot of worlds. Mom would have told you that the way the Empire was nationalizing the farms made those starvation conditions worse. I’d be willing to bet that Pat would tell you that those people were already starving, and getting the farms up and producing took time, and the Rebellion just capitalized on an inevitable situation.”

And both of them are willing to bet that the truth was likely somewhere in between. Getting farms up and producing likely does take time, and a starving population is a population that’s not causing too much trouble.

They feel, more than hear, a presence behind them. It’s Myrkle, with a basket in hand, and some very good smelling bread in the basket.

“I’m sorry to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding,” Rey says. “I was wondering how old the wine is.”

Myrkle smiles a little at the question. “This bottle. Two hundred and fifty years old.” He places the bread on the table.

“And the pictures on the walls? Is this where the wine comes from?” Rey asks.

“As best my grandmother could remember. These are copies of the paintings she made of their home…”

As Rey’s asking Myrkle about Valkieria, Kylo’s thinking, mostly about his mother, who always seemed to do this effortlessly, and what, in this position, she would chose to do. What would be warm, and friendly, and personable, and…

“…after they lost the farm, they went to Coruscant, and started up a restaurant. That was where my father grew up.”

“How did you get here?” Rey asks.

There are six chairs at the table, and they are, obviously, only taking up two of them. Kylo pulls one of them out. “Join us? We’re not going to drink the whole bottle ourselves, so… unless you’re personally cooking the food, share your gift with us?”

He can feel Rey smiling at him for that.

Myrkle looks stunned, and almost alarmed, a little nervous at messing this up, but… He does sit, for a moment, then he’s up a heartbeat later, getting a glass, and pouring some for himself. “This was from the heart of the vineyard. Wines that were bottled and stored for celebrations.”

“And you’d give it to us?” Rey asks.

He takes a long swallow, eyes closed, feeling it on his tongue, and then smiles. “Well, my lady, how often do I have the Master and his…?” He lets that dangle before saying, “Will you forgive the question… none of us know exactly what you are to each other… Just that you are.”

“Wife,” Kylo says. “Kylo and Rey.”

Myrkle’s beaming at that. “How often do I have the Master and his bride, in my restaurant, sharing a glass with me? If this is not a celebration, what is?”

Kylo smiles genuinely at that. “Indeed. So, tell us about,” he gestures at the food in front of them. “How are you supposed to eat it? We made little sandwiches, but…”

And Myrkle, very pleased to be sharing some of his favorite things with two people who are both insanely powerful, stupidly in love, and apparently genuinely interested in his food, has a very good time doing so.

 

* * *

Two hours later, they’re beyond well fed, fairly tipsy, in possession of more information about Valkieria than they ever expected to have, along with plans to visit at some point, and directions to a cinema, which, according to Myrkle absolutely should have at least three romances playing tonight.

(Apparently, there’s some sort of service on the datapads, that not only has a map of F-Deck, showing where everyone lives, all the businesses, and what they sell; there are also listings of every show playing at the cinemas, what those shows are, and when.)

So, having borrowed Myrkle’s datapad for a bit (He’s very nice about not being completely stunned to see the Master of the Order didn’t know that the  _Supremacy_ directory was a thing.) they’ve located a promising looking romantic comedy, and head off, in a somewhat more giggly and looser than normal sort of way.

(Myrkle will later report, that even though he only had two glasses of wine, that just being near the two of them made him feel tipsy. Apparently, the Master or possibly his wife, maybe both, can, if they’re in their cups… cup, Kylo had two glasses, and Rey one… project mild inebriation.)

 

* * *

Unlike dinner, they decide to attend the cinema in stealth style. They just want to watch the thing, not attract attention, so a few steps away from Myrkle’s they just vanish into the crowd, and become two random members of it.

Which works better because they don’t have to Force wrestle the attendant at the cinema into taking payment from them. (Which they absolutely had to do with Myrkle.)

And then… It’s a big dark room with a lot of seats. Kylo decides that he’s tall enough he’s not doing any favors for anyone who might sit behind him, plus he’s generally not comfortable allowing people to sit behind him. Granted, he’ll know if they try something before they try it, but it still makes him itchy in a way he doesn’t generally like. So they go to the seats in the far back of the room, and wait.

Eventually, more people shuffle in, sit down, talk quietly.

Eventually, the lights turn off, everyone shuts up, and the movie begins.

 

* * *

It’s a romance all right. Probably. They’ve been in it for about ten minutes and… okay, other than the fact that everyone in this thing is stupidly attractive, not much is happening. Romances are supposed to have plots, right?

 _Bored?_ He thinks to Rey.

She’s not exactly fidgeting, but it’s clear this isn’t doing it for her.  _I’m mentally going over tomorrow’s lessons with the kids. Do you think people really enjoy this?_

Kylo stops focusing on the movie and starts focusing on the people around them. Rey does likewise, answering her own question.

 _Apparently, yes._ He thinks to her. There is a general sense of anticipation among the other cinema-goers, but what, exactly they’re looking forward to isn’t abundantly clear.

 _Apparently. What are they getting out of this that we… oh…_ Rey’s eyebrows have risen. The characters on the screen are getting significantly more interesting by the second.

Kylo’s have, too.  _Ah… Well… Yes… That’s… Uh…_ He’s  _not_ blushing. Rey’s leaning forward a bit, her interest in the movie picking up rapidly.

The very pretty people on the screen have gone from verbally sniping at each other to kissing, and petting, and more kissing, and… Okay…

Both of them are rapidly coming to a conclusion as to why people might want to watch something like this.

 _People watch this in public…_ Rey’s thinking.

 _Not that I knew of, but…_ Well, they’re very pretty, and the kissing is intense, and the lady isn’t wearing a whole lot of clothing. Everything Kylo’d prefer an uninterrupted view of is currently covered, but the man is moving his hand toward her breast, and about to get her shirt off, and… the lady’s leg is crooked over the man’s hip, so…

 _This could be promising,_ Kylo thinks to Rey. He’ll admit, that when they looked for a  _romance_  this wasn’t what he thought they were going to get, but he’s not averse to watching attractive people get naked and fuck. (He is a little surprised to see this is a thing people do in large anonymous groups, though.)

 _Fuck!_ Rey thinks it to him, frustration pounding off of her.

Kylo’s not thrilled with this twist in the plot, either.

The… annoying comic relief just walked in, and is standing around, supposedly oblivious to what’s going on, and the pretty people are now pretending nothing was up, badly. The Handsome Man has the Pretty Lady’s lipstick on his face. And then, they’re back to snarking at each other.

 _Apparently not,_ Kylo thinks back.

Comic Relief makes a joke, but neither he nor Rey get it. Everyone around them is sniggering in a sort of dirty amusement, so it’s got to be a sex joke, but…

 _I take it you don’t know what a dildo is,_ Rey thinks to Kylo.

_Other than something that appears to make people laugh, and feel vaguely naughty about it, no. I suppose if we focused in, we could find out._

Rey continues to feel the general mood of the people around them.  _I’m not sure I want to get that close._

_Me, too. I’ll ask Jon if I remember._

_Good._

The snarking is kind of boring, and Comic Relief, who genuinely is funny, has wandered off, taking the guy with him, and… Well, Kylo was at least vaguely interested when the woman was on screen, but Handsome Man and the Comic Relief snarking with each other is doing exactly nothing for him, so… He starts to pay attention to the other people in the audience.

 _They like it._ He thinks to Rey.

She nodding along…  _I liked the kissing. This is dull…_ The tenor of the snarking is shifting and now Comic Relief and the Handsome Man are  _really_  looking at each other and…  _Or maybe not. I might be starting to like this,_ Rey thinks to Kylo. She doesn’t mind pretty boys kissing each other, at all.

He rolls his eyes.  _If there’s a sequel, maybe you and Jon can enjoy it together._

_You’re just annoyed the lady isn’t on the screen right now._

_Well, yes. Neither of the men are even remotely interesting to me._

Rey spends a moment really watching the Handsome Man and Comic Relief.  _I like them._

_I know, I can feel it._

_Well, ride it off of me. You’ll probably enjoy this more._

He half-inclines his head, and then slouches down a bit, resting his head on her shoulder. He lets his mind settle onto hers, and… it’s an odd sensation, because as himself, pretty boys snogging away (and for  _them_  shirts go flying. There are four hairy boobs on screen now, and Kylo wanted to see exactly none of them… more eye rolling on that) just doesn’t do anything, but he can also feel Rey  _vividly_  enjoying it, so…

That’s something. It’s more than a bit surreal, because his personal body isn’t exactly equipped with the bits of hers where she’s very concretely enjoying this, and normally, when he’s riding the sensations off of her sexual experience, his own bits are very involved, too. If she’s hot and wet and ultra-sensitive, he can feel it through her body and generally  _on_  or at least  _with_  his. But the part of his body he usually experiences sexual arousal and interest through is currently located in his own trousers, and hasn’t exactly gotten the idea that anything is going on, yet. Though if this keeps up, and if he keeps watching it through Rey’s experience of it, it likely will.

He tries to feel what Rey likes about the guys, but… He knows it’s real, he can feel her enjoying it, and if he wants to, he can ride her pleasure in it, but he can’t empathize with it.

Then the girl shows up, and apparently she’s not a fan of the pretty boys kissing, either, because she gets upset at them.

Handsome Man appears to be confused by this, because though he’s certainly pretty, he’s also dumber than a bantha, and…

More talking.

Comic Relief and Pretty Lady storm off in a huff, another dildo joke that gets a  _lot_  of laughing, and Handsome Man looks annoyed.

Rey thinks to him.  _You think this is going to have the solution I’d expect?_

_I’m honestly not sure._

Comic Relief and Pretty Lady head off, together, and get talking, and a  _plan_ is born.

 _I’ll admit that’s not what I was expecting._ Rey thinks to Kylo a few moments later when bitching about Handsome Man turns into a plan to get caught ‘making out’ ( _Have you heard that term before?_ Rey thinks.  _Not since I was fifteen.)_ with each other, to show him how it feels.

 _Is this supposed to be funny?_ Rey thinks.

_Who cares, she’s taking her shirt off, finally!_

Rey snuggles into Kylo, thinking,  _She has really nice breasts._ They’re high and round, and a pretty caramel brown color with mahogany nipples, and Comic Relief is squeezing one of them.

Kylo’s caught, stuck between appreciating Pretty Lady's now topless state, and the fact that he can feel Rey enjoying it, too. Just like the pretty boys. Well… no… not  _just_ like it. It’s a bit less intense, and a little more longing than when she’s watching the boys, maybe a bit of a sense that she'd also like some very high, round boobs, but… It’s very much not how he’s responding to it.

 _She does._ Those are lovely, and there are a whole lot of things he wouldn’t mind getting the chance to do with them. He can feel Rey’s interest in that, too. What he might want to do, and how it might feel to watch or play along with something like that.

A really vivid image of the two of them with the girl between them bursts into Kylo’s mind, and he’s got no idea of if it’s his or Rey’s. Kylo’s not sure what to do with that. Then he nuzzles at Rey’s shoulder and cups her breast.  _I like yours better._

_I know._

_I_ really  _like what’s attached to them better._

She kisses him, sweetly, before whispering in his ear, “I  _know._ ”

 

 

He smirks at her, and then nudges her a bit, so she settles into his lap.  _Okay, this is improving things._

She wriggles pleasantly against him.  _Yes, it is._

 

* * *

As Pretty Lady and Comic Relief planned, Handsome Man walked in on them before they could do much beyond get her shirt off, which was… Expected but somewhat disappointing.

What’s not disappointing is Rey in Kylo’s lap.

This is warm and nice, and she’s rocking against him in a very pleasant and distracting sort of way. (Which he appreciates because apparently getting walked in on has resulted in  _everyone_ getting completely dressed and more talking, which is not, in either Rey or Kylo’s opinion, improving the film.)

He’s playing with the hem of her skirt, thinking… It is a dark room… And… well, it’s not like anyone is going to look at them… And it would be…  _fun._

Rey wriggles a bit against him.  _You hoping to put Jon’s fun with blind corners to the test?_

Kylo’s honestly not sure. Part of him is really enjoying the idea.  _Really enjoying the idea._  And Rey is deliberately rubbing up against that part with her exceptionally sweet little ass, and he’s very fond of that sensation, along with the other sensations she’s not exactly promising, but is certainly suggesting could be coming his way.

Part of him is very aware of the fact that they’re in a theater with a whole lot of people, and… well, he’s just not  _that_  drunk. Two glasses of wine is actually really nice. He’s feeling pretty relaxed and calm and just… good. But not… reckless.

He nibbles her ear a little, and thinks,  _Maybe?_ He thinks about the movie a bit.  _Wanna make out?_

Rey giggles out loud at that. Which, fortunately isn’t completely out of line because the actors are talking again, and comic relief said something vaguely funny, so…

 _And how do we do that?_ Rey thinks to Kylo.

He glances to the left and right. They’re the only people in the back row. The arm rest thingies between the seats can be pushed up, so he pushes the ones on the seats next to them up, and shifts a bit so Rey’s sitting across his lap, instead of in it.

Then he gently pulls her lips to his.  _I understand it involves kissing and groping._

She traces her lips over his, following with her tongue, just lightly stroking it along his bottom lip.  _Uh huh. And how do you understand that?_

He catches her tongue with his lips, sucking it gently.  _It’s possible I may have overheard a story or two back when I was young._

Her hand traces down his chest, and is about to settle in his lap when he grabs it, and redirects it to his chest.

She breaks the kiss and raises an eyebrow at him.  _No groping there?_

He grins at her, traces his hand from her toes to mid-thigh, and then lifts off, skittering to her waist, and up her torso, settling on her bosom, before tracing up her shoulder to the back of her neck.  _Groping here. Anywhere else is out of bounds._

 

 

She takes his hand in hers, and begins to lightly stroke against his wrist.  _This game has weird rules._

 _I don’t disagree._ He takes her cheek in his hand, and begins to lightly trace her lips with his tongue.  _But maybe it’ll be fun._

 _And, tonight, we’re all about_ fun,  _right?_

His fingers slip from her cheek to the nape of her neck, and he draws her closer as he deepens the kiss.  _All about fun._

* * *

Making out is  _different._

It’s not that they don’t cuddle or kiss or pet or… Anything they’re doing right now. All of it’s familiar. (Though Kylo’s mildly surprised to see how sensitive his nipples actually are. Rey generally doesn’t play with them  _this_  much, and… he’s actually rather liking that. Granted, it could also be that he’s got her to the point where she’s full body quivering each time he draws the pad of his fingers over one of hers, and she could be projecting that onto him. Either way, he’s enjoying it.) It’s just  _different._

If they were home, in their bed, or the pool, or a hotel room… or anywhere private, they’d be  _done_ by now.

Wet, tired, blissful and sated.

And right now they are most decidedly  _not._

He’s starting to come to the conclusion that the other young Jedi he heard talking about this were lying about the rules, or were punishing themselves more effectively than he ever did with his almost complete abstinence and occasional wanking.

This is  _torture._ He can feel his pulse in his shaft. He can feel Rey’s pulse in her lips and under his fingertips. The fingertips lightly, so, so lightly slipping over her nipple, making her writhe against him, her body across his lap  _almost_  giving him just a bit of pressure and friction where he needs it, but not  _quite_  there.

 

* * *

In his later years with Luke, when he was past the erection-on-legs stage of life, after he’d  _learned control,_ Kylo didn’t exactly have a sex-life. He had… a sort of anti-sex life.

As Luke had said, trying to be calm, and only slightly blushing, that, ‘Once mastery of your sexual desires has been obtained, your body will regulate itself and take care of any needs it might have.”

It was clear Ben, who was twelve when Luke said that to him, and had not yet woken up sticky and confused from any “intense” dreams, had no idea what Luke was talking about.

So, again attempting to be calm and not exactly meeting Ben’s eyes, Luke explained about nocturnal emissions, and how the Force, in It’s wisdom, had designed their bodies to meet their needs if they’d just let them, and that waiting would often  _feel_ difficult, but that the Force would reward them for mastering themselves, and the experience was generally rather pleasurable and worth looking forward to.

Years later, Ben hit the point where he could, just by the feel of his body, know when said  _reward_  was coming.

Right now, with Rey in his lap,  _not_ touching his shaft, which is so hard, it’s almost vibrating with need, and thrumming with each heartbeat, he feels like he’s getting ready to sleep on one of those nights. He’s letting her feel the sensation of it, sharing the memories.

If it was warm enough, he’d strip off his sleep trousers, and pull his night shirt up so it wouldn’t brush his shaft. Just the rustle of his clothing and breath against his shaft was…  _almost_ enough. It couldn’t… quite… do it, so it was mostly just torturous frustration, but…  _almost._

The brush of her hip,  _almost_  where he needs it. The thrum of electric pleasure of his fingers on her nipples, or hers on his, it’s  _just, almost_ there.

As a younger man, he’d lay on his hands, so he wouldn’t be tempted to cheat. He’d wait, not patiently, because he was never good at patient, but he’d wait, and fall asleep, and have  _very_ intense dreams. They weren’t even wildly explicit, because at that point he didn’t exactly have enough information for his imagination to come up with explicit dreams, but the sensations were  _intense._

He’d wake up soaked, and each time, he’d be proud of, finally, having done something  _right._

After all, good Jedi submitted themselves to the Force, and let It take care of them.

Rey licks his neck, sucking a gently, pulling the blood to the surface, and even more pleasure through his skin.

_How do you feel about submitting to me?_

His whole body quivers with the answer.  _Yes!_

 

* * *

Rey’s kissing his ear, hand stroking over his stomach, fiddling with the button on his pants. She’s not opening them, yet. She is teasing him, because each brush of her fingers over the button on the fly sends just, barely, a hint of friction to his shaft. She’s winding through his memories of those nights, laying there, quivering, just the feel of the air, and his breath, the occasional brush of his pubic hair against the base of his shaft if he shifted a bit, and how days, weeks sometimes of denial make  _everything_ so vibrant. She threads through his memory of the dreams, mostly the feel of them, playing with the sensation of being  _so_ ready and needy and  _hard._

She sucks on his earlobe, fingertip gliding over the metal of his trouser button, and then thinks at him,  _No more waiting._  Then she slips her hand down, cupping him through his trousers, and Kylo groans a whole lot louder than he’d intended to, full body shuddering at the feel of her hand, warm and firm, cradling him.

He feels her smile against his ear.  _Maybe you can wait longer, but_ _I can’t wait another fucking second to get you inside of me._

He turns his face to hers, cupping his hand against the back of her head, and kisses her, deeply.  _Yes!_

His fingers slip under her skirt, and his lips ghost over her neck. He traces the tips of his fingers over the seam of her leggings. Light, delicate touches, enough to make her squirm, pressing against him, looking for more friction.

 _Kylo, don’t tease. An hour was_ more  _than enough._

He pulls her lips to his. They’re plump, hot, swollen from so many kisses.  _I’ve waited weeks, eighteen days once, an hour is nothing._

She scoots, so she’s facing him, pelvis flush to his, and begins to rock gently,  _Kylo!_

His hands find her hips, and he encourages her motion. It’s just…  _so good._  It’d be better if they weren’t wearing leggings and trousers, but…

As soon as he’s thought it she’s caught it, and thinking at him,  _How…_ his shaft is keeping just enough pressure on her pearl…  _good…_ it’s hard to stay focused on what she’s trying to keep in mind…  _is the do not look spell?_

He can feel what she wants to do next. Stand up, pull him out of his trousers, and settle back onto him, and right now… He’s sober now, stone cold sober, but he’s so wound up he wants to scream, so…

Fuck it, He’s the Master of this ship and if they’re a whirlwind romance, let them whirl.

_Good enough._

She’s up, pulling off her leggings, and he’s undoing his belt and fly, fishing his shaft out of his trouser and hissing in relief at the feel of  _anything_ touching him. He can feel her magic, redoubling the do-not-look. Everyone around them, though the closest ones are a few rows ahead of them, are all staring straight at the screen.

Once he’s out, she sinks onto him, and doesn’t groan, but they both want to. It’s do-not-look, not do-not-hear.

His lips are pressed to her neck, just below her ear, so she can hear and feel his breath, and the  _oooo fuck_ that purrs from her mind to his shivers through him.

_Exactly._

* * *

It’s just so  _wrong._

This isn’t out in a secluded alleyway. They’re in the back of a theater, with at least fifty other people around them, and…

They won’t look.

But they could.

And again, it’s  _Do not look,_ not  _do not hear_ and even with the sound of the movie, which is fairly loud, they aren’t silent, and that wet, slick, slide squish… She’s  _so wet_. They played with each other for so long, and she’s just  _soaked_ , and he’s been leaking, adding to the wet, and they’re just  _gliding_ , wet and supple and swollen and so sensitive, and… everyone around them… hidden but not… and they could get caught, and she’s easing back up his shaft again, and there’s this soft, wet little kiss sound as she pulls all the way off of him, and his head hits the back of the seat with a dull thud, and he hopes no one noticed that, and…  _fuck_ … she’s just  _rubbing_  against his tip, and…

And  _fuck_  he suddenly knows  _exactly_ why Jon likes this because it’s just so  _fucking wrong._

Rey’s shifts her angle, sliding all the way down him, and rocking on him slow and deep, mostly to keep the sound down, or to kill him slowly, either, possibly both.

She’s creeping up and up and up then grinding her pearl on the tip of him before slowly, so fucking slowly sinking  _all the way_ onto him, and Kylo’s gripping the armrests so hard he’s in danger of cracking them, except, that would make too much noise.

 

 

His head is against the back of the seat, and his eyes are closed, shutting down one line of information to make it easier to focus on another, her body, and that slow, easy glide. Her wet and slick and snug and…

And it’s a terrible thought. So wrong. Luke’s head would probably explode just at the idea, and every other Jedi to ever Jedi are all rolling in their collective graves, but… He doesn’t fucking care.

He shifts the magic of the choke hold. He’s certainly done that before, and with great success. That’s just focusing his hand, and what he’d do with it, to a place where his hand isn’t. His hands are on the armrests, but his middle finger starts a slow, steady circle.

Rey gasps, loud. Fortunately, the pretty lady, comic relief, and pretty boy are fucking, too, so they likely thought it was one of them.

Kylo smirks, for a second, and then… Holy fuck, she’s doing it back to him. Her Force is gently, easily tugging on his stones, and… They’re still in his trousers, but…

He doesn’t groan, out loud. He does fill her head with a loud, enthusiastic  _FUCK!!!_

He can feel her grinning, as she adds a delicious little roll to go with the way her hips are still  _slowly_  easing up and down him.

_You’re killing me!_

She’s high up, just the top few centimeters cradled inside of her, and she gives him a gentle squeeze.  _That’s the point._

He can’t stay still. His hips rock up to meet her, trying to get more friction, faster. His jaw clenches as he feels the slide of her body on his, and the wet embrace as he slips deeper into her.  _Fuck, Rey! FUCK!_

The chair under them gives a loud creak, and they both go completely still. There’s no way that was a scene in the movie, so… Some people look around. They can both feel a few of them sniggering, the idea that some people are really enjoying this movie doesn’t seem to be too shocking to them.

Kylo’s hands land on Rey’s waist, pulling her completely down on his lap, burying himself in her wet, hot, rich, suppleness. Another groan makes it out of his lips as she squeezes around him, then light, soft flutters, and she’s starting to rise again, and if she keeps this up, she’s going to toss him over the edge.

 _Stay down_ he thinks to her, pinning her hips to his. He scoots forward and leans back a little, getting a deeper angle. Getting as far into her as his body and this position can go. Then he starts to quietly rock his hips, trying to bump that spot inside of her that really likes a bit of bumping now and again.

That gets a soft groan out of her. He’s got the angle dead right. He slips his fingers between her lips.  _Stay quiet._

She sucks his fingers, and he groans in his head, rocking his hips just a little more. Just enough to get a little more pressure on that spot. Not so much as to make the chair creak again. This gentle up down, he can do this all day. It’s not enough, not if he’s not riding her good time, to get him over the line.

His other hand finds her pearl, circling fast and hard. But he can make it enough for her.  _Here, now. I’m going to fuck you through your spurt, then I’m taking us home where I can really move and fuck you through mine._

 

 

 

He feels her mental whimper, and her lips pursing on his fingers, and her delta clenching against his shaft.

She’s breathing harder as his fingers fly, and the sound is soft, but not silent. Her breath. The wet slickery roll of his fingers on her pearl.

His mouth is on her shoulder, biting gently, helping to keep himself from following over her edge.

She feels so good on him, wet and plush and snug. Her head is back, throat long and white in the dim cinema lights , and he can feel the soft vibration of an almost moan cresting in her throat.

_Quiet, love, quiet._

Another quivering almost moan as his fingers move faster and Rey grinds on his lap.

_That’s it. Take your pleasure on me, love. Let me feel you clench._

She’s so close. Her pearl is slick and stiff, jutting out under his fingers. Her body is tight, thighs, back, butt, delta, all quivering just on the right side of her release.

 _Going to make you pulse, take you home, ass high in the air, and_ move!  _Side in hard and deep, hitting all those places you like, fast, so fucking fast, feel you ripple on me as I bury myself in you over and over, keep you twitching while I hit my spurt._

 _KYLO!_ That does it, she’s pulsing against him, and he’s ported, pulling them through space into their bedroom.

He doesn’t want to pull out, but he’s got to get them in a better position. “Elbows and knees!” He’s skinning off his trousers,  _fast._

And she’s on them, and he’s on the bed, flipping her skirt over her back, pulling her onto him, deep, deep, deep inside, thrusting hard and fast, and she’s still rippling against him, he call feel it, her spurt is easing off, but she’s riding his which is building fast.

 

 

"FUCK!” he shouts it, because  _now_  they can be loud. His body is slamming into hers, wet slapping sounds filling their room, and Rey’s moaning, deep, vibrant sounds of pleasure, and he’s so fucking close, and so deep, and her body’s hot and soft and wet and gliding over his.

“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK,” he’s chanting it with each slap of his hips against her ass, and there, right, fucking there, it’s growing, a hot, tight tingle of need and want, and he’s clenching against her, grinding as the pulse shatters and everything goes just a hair tighter before every muscle in his body releases and his spurt spurts, washing through both of them in a glorious series of tingling waves.

He’s draped over her, panting, head against her back.

He feels her giggle.

 

 

 _Funny?_ he thinks as he feels her back rising and falling against his chest, and both of their hearts starting to slow.

_Just thinking. If we let them turn us into… The handsome prince and his lady… And Ellie’s right, and they make stories and movies and the rest of this… Do you think one day there’ll be some other couple sitting in a cinema doing this to a version of us?_

Kylo buries his face in her hair and groans. He’s not sure if that idea embarrasses him horribly, or is halfway to getting him hard again. “That’s so wrong.” He loops an arm around her waist and flops both of them onto their sides. He doesn’t want to pull out, yet, but he’s sure this isn’t terrifically comfortable for her, and really, he doesn’t want to support his own weight anymore, either.

She wriggles against him. “Not all of you seems to think so.”

“I’m sure I’ve said it before, or at least thought it, that part is stupid.”

She laughs at that, too. “That part likes me.”

He snerks. “Well, I never said it had bad taste.”

“Nice save, Ren.”

He gives her a little bit of a squeeze and kisses the back of her neck. “So, did we have fun?”

She offers up a soft half-laugh at that. “Yeah, I think we did.”


	11. The Handsome Prince and His Lady

 

1/21/2

 

Waking up in Lirium, after their “fun” night, Kylo and Rey are still facing the issue they were trying to avoid with said “fun” night.

It’s not exactly the proverbial bantha in the room, but it’s still there, threatening to poke through the quiet morning of making breakfast and getting ready for the day.

Kylo decides to nudge it from the side. “What’s on for your day?”

 

 

She smiles at him, sitting down on the bench next to him, and forking over half of the scrambled eggs onto his plate. “As Jon would say, ‘Force stuff.’ Got a few hours cleared to spend with the teens to work on applied focus.”

He nods at that. “Bending them into weird positions and then making them think hard about things?”

“I tend to do the bending into weird positions for everyone all together. This is more sitting comfortably, and then trying to really feel it and settle into it. Magiit wants to join in, too, and… I don’t know what she’ll get out of it, but I don’t see why she can’t come, so… It’ll be interesting.”

Kylo shrugs a bit, and eats a bite of the eggs before saying, “I can’t image it’d hurt her. Just seems sort of boring and frustrating if you can’t really touch the Force.”

Rey nods a bit at that. “I’d think so, but… We’re not low on room. It’s not like there’s any reason she can’t sit in.”

“Is she… okay, with just being there?”

“So far. I don’t get the sense that she’s jealous or frustrated… I think… I don’t know exactly what she gets out of it, but I think she wants to get closer to her friends, try to understand them and what they’re doing better.”

“Okay.”

She eats a bite of her eggs, and reaches for the salt. “How about you?”

“Still clearing out my backlog of everything I didn’t do while gearing up for the First Year party. Meetings with Kinear and Schiff… Probably a half dozen other things that C8’s keeping track of and I’m not.”

Rey nods at that. “New Alderaan?”

“Maybe? Supposedly my legal team is getting things into place, but they’ve never gotten a first draft of a contract back to me in less than a month. Sometimes two.” He adds a little jam to his porridge, and notices it’s the last of it. “Need to get more of this.”

She nods. “Finn and Chewie are due home with fresh fruit and veg soon. Once they’re back, it’s cooking time.”

He nods at that, and then takes a bite of his breakfast. Finally he says, “Do you… want to do that?”

That also, touches, sideways, what they’re not exactly talking about.

“Take the treaty to New Alderaan…”

“Yeah…”

She bites her lip, thinking. “That’d probably involve getting dressed up and looking regal and…”

“Being Lady Ren…”

She nods, still chewing on her lip.

Kylo strokes her hand. “You know, my mom was their actual princess.”

“Until they booted her out.”

“True… But… I mean… They didn’t boot her out for her manners. They booted her out because someone else wanted her job.”

“But she was good at the manners stuff, right?”

Kylo shrugs a bit. “I imagine she must have been, but… Poe’s got stories of her cracking dirty jokes, and when Luke and Dad got her out of that cell, the first thing she did was grab a gun and start shooting. She wasn’t exactly _polite_ to them. I think the first thing she ever said to Luke, and bear in mind she was still in an Imperial prison when she did this, was, ‘Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?’”

Rey smiles a bit at that.

Kylo nods and continues on, “So… It’s not like they aren’t used to someone who’s willing to speak their mind, or shoot first and ask question never, when they feel like it.”

“But they’re also used to someone who knows which fork to use, and how to… I don’t know… what’s a big deal on New Alderaan?”

He half smiles, a little. “Love, I’m the last person you want to ask about that. I know what I was raised with, but it’s not like she ever pointed it out. This is Alderaanian culture, and this isn’t. Threepio knows. He could tell you.”

She sighs at that. “He could. He’d probably like doing it, too.”

Kylo smiles at that. “Yes, he would.” He takes another bite. “You want me to speed this up? Explain to legal we want that treaty sooner rather than later?”

“Ellie would probably like that.”

“Yes, she would. That doesn’t tell me if you’d like it, though.”

Rey look frustrated. “I don’t know. If I screw this up, it’s going to go _so_ wrong. This isn’t just… I don’t know… Some tiny little thing. This is 'go take a treaty to a bunch of people you don’t know, and try to get them to sign it,' and… It’s _big._ It’s planet-spanning _big._ ”

Kylo strokes her hand again. “Yep. That said, there should be absolutely nothing in there, at all, that’ll raise even the most finicky of eyebrows, and they did _ask_ us for a non-aggression treaty, so…”

“So… This should be… playing on the kiddie level or something?”

“Well… Taking a non-aggression treaty to a planet known for pacifistic governance probably has an awfully low chance of backfiring on you. I mean, they’re not going to respond while you’re there. You deliver it, spend some time with their people, their legal people will go over it, and eventually send a marked up version to my legal people… I think you go just to look pretty and make some sort of… Image… while offering it.”

“Reminding them all that if they don’t much love… Who’s actually in charge there?”

Kylo thinks about it. “You know, I’m not sure. Not Organa. He’s attached to the royal court somehow, but not in charge of it.”

“That’s the sort of thing we’re supposed to know, right?”

He sighs. “Probably. You were saying?”

“I’m going there to hand this thing over, and remind them that you’re still an option, right? They don’t like New Alderaan the way it is, they can come to you.”

“Probably. Granted, that’s true if you show up or not. That’s true for everyone in the galaxy who can get to a recruiting station.”

“True…” She stares out the window. “It’s not quite the same for New Alderaan though, is it?”

He half inclines his head, and then kisses her shoulder. “Probably not.” He ponders for a moment. “I suppose part of what you could be bringing over is me officially dropping myself out of the running. They’d probably like that, too.”

“Probably… I mean… You never actually want to rule New Alderaan, so it’s not like you need the birthright…”

“Not like I’m used to thinking of it. She signed it away before I really knew it was a thing.”

Rey raises an eyebrow at that.

“I knew she was the first senator of New Alderaan. Dad would tease her with ‘Your Worshipfulness’ or ‘Your Highness’ so I knew she was Princess Leia… I just… never put that together with the idea that it meant anything for me. Not like I grew up in a palace with people calling me Prince Ben. I was probably intentionally not raised on New Alderaan for that reason. So, the first time it was real, that it mattered, was Snoke whispering in my head about how she’d struck me from the succession. How I wasn’t good enough to be Prince Ben, how…” He’s looking far away, at the snow pouring down outside their window. She can feel what he doesn’t say, that he was _never_ good enough, for anything. Even as a baby he wasn’t ever Prince Ben. “That was one of the few times I called her, and yelled at her, and… And instead of anything useful, she got all huffy about how I could have known that had happened, like it’s my fault she’s got to explain to me that apparently Darth Vader was her father, and oh, by the way, we’re actually, really, royalty, and yes, there’s this community which used to be a planet and she’s kind of their Queen, or would be if she bothered to sign up to do it. Instead of even touching that, she’s getting into my dark voice again, and…” He shakes his head. “And then Luke’s hovering around, pestering me about shutting the voice up, and no one thinks I’m being remotely reasonable because I’m angry I wasn’t even consulted about her throwing my birthright away, or not mentioning who my grandfather was. They’re all focused on how I could have known.”

She rests her head against his shoulder. Then quietly says, “Do you want to be the… handsome prince? Play the role?”

He kisses her forehead. “I… maybe… Or…” There are so many emotions swirling around him right now, it’s hard to pin down any given one of them, but eventually he manages to snag one. “I’d like to at least have people not outright laugh at the idea. I… want to be worthy of it? Or… turn it down for myself?” He didn’t quiet mean for that to be a question, but she gets what he’s saying.

“You never got to be Prince Ben, for reasons completely outside of your control, and now it might be back, and…”

“And if I toss it aside, I want to toss it aside for me. Because I choose not to do it. Not because it’s being ripped away from me.”

Rey nods at that. “Control. That’s always going to be a thing for us, isn’t it?”

“At least for me. Probably. You?”

“I think so, but from the other side. It’s easier to just get swept up and flow along, you know?”

He kisses the top of her head. “Dark and light. No, on that front, I really don’t know. But a lot of the things I’ve been swept up into also weren’t attempting to take me anywhere I needed to be, so there’s that, too.” He fiddles with his eggs. “Maybe it’s easier to get swept up if the current takes you where you need to go.” He eats a bite. “Luke talked about that. Letting go with the Force. Sliding into it. Letting it carry you and take you. I didn’t want to just be some sort of passive thing floating around bound to a destiny I couldn’t control.”

Rey looks out the window. Waiting on Jakku for… years. Finally going with Finn, joining the Resistance, going after Luke, coming here… How much of that had she chosen for herself instead of just floating along?

“If I don’t want to do this?”

“Then don’t.”

“That’s easy to say.”

“It’s easy to do, too.”

She looks away, and pokes her breakfast. “I feel like I’m letting you down if I don’t.”

He closes his eyes, and kisses the top of her head. “Love, you made it abundantly clear that ruling the galaxy with me wasn’t part of the deal. I’m dense about some things, but you pulled a lightsaber on me when I suggested it, so I got the message. If you do this, I’d love it. But you don’t have to. I… want it, but I don’t expect it.”

She touches the Order of the Maji pendent on her throat. “You asked again when you gave me this.”

“I know. And you didn’t knock me out then, which I appreciated.”

She snerks a little at how dryly he says that. “Sometimes it feels right, and sometimes it feels wrong, and sometimes it’s terrifying, and… I don’t like feeling… unsure about everything all the time. Like I don’t know what I’m doing, or if I’m doing it right, or not knowing how things will turn out, and… It’s just scary.”

He smiles at that, and snuggles in closer to her. “Yeah, it is.”

“And I feel like I should be certain about this. Like I should just do it or not do it and once I’ve made the decision feel settled and ready and… It doesn’t feel that way.”

He kisses her ear. “Nope. Luke told us Yoda said ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’ And I guess from a how things work out perspective, that’s true. Either you do it or you don’t, but from a thinking about things, and working toward them perspective, it’s not really helpful.”

“All black and white.”

“Or light and dark… It’s okay not to be certain, or immediately feel like this is exactly what you want to do, or not do.”

“And is it okay if one day I want to do it, and the next it’s too scary?”

He kisses her again. “Yeah, it is.”

And neither of them mention that the Handsome Prince needs his Lady for the story to work. That this is either an all-in or not-at-all sort of thing.

Though they both feel it.

 

 

* * *

Rey feels like she should have a better name for this “class” than “Somewhat More Advanced Force Stuff Than What I Teach The Little Guys,” but, well, that’s exactly what it is, so…

It’s after lunch. Right now Rose and Poe have the aforementioned little guys, and they’re all working on making sure the rope lines between the cottages are in good shape and the Faviers have a lot of feed on hand. Cassie says a big storm is coming tonight, so… They’re making sure they’re good and ready for it.

Meanwhile, Rey’s got Jacen, Critt, Elias, Savarah, and Magiit. Right now, they’re in her cottage, because the chapel’s just too cold most of the time, and it’s not like they need a lot of room for just the six of them.

Sitting in the main room, on the floor, some of them cross-legged, some lying down, (Though Rey poked Jacen when he stretched out, reminding him this was thinking time, not napping time. He rolled his eyes at that.) they’re settling in to just flow with the Force.

 

 

Rey’s cross-legged on the floor, back resting against the comfy chair, letting her eyes close. “So the point of this is to just reach out and let yourself feel it. Sky above, ground below, life within and out, death waiting, feel all of it, feel the balance. Let it cradle and support you, and find your own spot in it, where you balance with it.”

Some of the kids, like Savarah, slide into it easily. Critt has a harder time calming his mind down. It’s bright and jittery in still moments like this, so Rey touches his hand, and quietly says, “If it’s easier to move or bounce around when you do this, try moving around. It’s probably easier for me to do this still, because I bend more light. You might need to move or pace or something, and that’s okay.”

He stands up and jitters a bit, while pacing, and she can feel his mind settling easier into the flow. She makes a mental note to mention that to Kylo, and ask more about how it was easier to meditate when he was writing.

Once she feels them all, even Magiit, and that surprises her, she’s not sure if Magiit’s riding the experience of the others around her, or if… normal people… (she doesn’t like that term…) non-Force-sensitive people… (that one is clunky… finding something else to describe the difference between her and Magiit goes on the to-do list) can meditate that deeply, or… Maybe she’s just imagining it very intensely, however it’s working, Magiit’s falling into it, too.

But once they’re all settled, Rey lets herself settle, too.

 

 

* * *

The first time she saw the line of a billion versions of herself stretching into infinity… or at least the mirror, Rey wasn’t really paying attention to where that line was.

She remembers the smell though. The feel of damp air. Everywhere on Ahch-to was damp.

The line is gone. She looks behind her and sees the billion Rey’s behind. The line _ahead_ of her is gone. The air, the damp, the grayish non-distinct background, that’s the same.

She doesn’t remember the cave. She couldn’t draw it from memory, or describe it for a story. None of that matters, she knows she’s there again.

She looks behind herself, and behind, there are a billion Reys all turning to look behind them. She looks ahead… The mirror appears again. And like last time it’s grayed out, blurred, useless. She doesn’t need a mirror, she needs a… Rey’s not sure what to call the thing she needs, but she knows it’s not a mirror.

She turns away from it, and the billion Reys behind her start to turn. She rolls her eyes at them. She doesn’t need the visual, she gets that right here and now there’s only the present and past, and the future is not yet written. The billion past Reys vanish.

Rey sits down, glances at the mirror again, even if it were to clarify, she knows what she’ll see, just her.

Luke sits next to her. “I never came down here.”

She shrugs at that.

“I had my own cave. On Dagobah.”

“Did you find it enlightening?”

“Scary mostly. At the time. Eventually it became enlightening. Or I became enlightened. Or… Enough time passed and I grew up some, and developed some perspective.”

Rey nods. “What did you see?”

“Myself. I was there to face Vader, and under his mask, it was me. I went looking for purpose, and I killed him, and for a second I felt like I’d vanquished all my demons, lived up to the man I was supposed to be, and… The mask burst off, and my own face was underneath.” He looks around the cave. “What did you see when you were down here?”

Rey gestures to where the line was. “Myself. A billion versions of it, stretching on through time. I begged the mirror to show me my parents, and where I belonged, and what my purpose was, and… It just showed me, me.”

Luke nods. “According to Obi Wan, there was a dark Force well under the Jedi temple on Coruscant. All of the Padawan would go, visit. Sooner or later they’d feel pulled. It… always showed you yourself. He thought that it was a warning, of what could happen if you let the dark inside take over.”

“You don’t think that, not anymore.”

“Not anymore. When I first saw the vision, I thought it was telling me that if I killed Vader, I’d become him. Now… I can see what that vision literally showed me, that if I had killed Vader, I would have destroyed myself, too. The… things… that make me myself would have died if I’d ended him. My survival as myself was tied to finding a way to go to Vader that didn’t involve destroying him.”

Rey nods. “Okay.”

“You looked for purpose, meaning, family, and found only yourself. What did you take that to mean, at the time?”

“That I was alone. Just me. Always just me.” She shoots Luke a withering look. “It’s not exactly like you were leaping up and down to offer me any assistance.”

“I ended up hiding out, alone, on an island in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the Force, having attempted to kill my nephew and, by doing so, putting a future into motion where he then turned around and murdered all of my students--”

“One.”

“One?” Luke look surprised by that. He’d been unconscious when Ben went after the rest of the school, and when he came to, everything was on fire, and he was the only living person on the planet. Of course, they didn’t leave corpses. But some of the clothing he found was burned or cut by lightsabers… And… well, he knew who had a saber, and the skill, to have done that.

“Tash. The only one he killed was Tash. Some of the others joined him. They fought alongside him. They killed the others, who were attacking them, because when you went down, Tash made the same decision you did, and rallied a number of the rest, but apparently she didn’t hesitate to strike.”

Luke’s eyes are tired. “No, she wouldn’t have. Still, the larger point, namely that I’m _not_ someone who was in any position to be giving anyone any sort of life advice, stands.”

Rey inclines her head. “So…”

“So… What do you take from it now? It’s been a few years. You are, clearly, not alone. What was the cave showing you?”

Rey sighs. She inclines her head a bit, and looks to the mirror. “It’s always going to be me. My purpose, my power, my… destiny… It’s me. I’ve got to find it for myself.”

Luke nods. “You have others who will help you, and support you, but… It’s always going to be you.” He shrugs a bit. “Now ask me about figuring out who you are?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’ll be _fun._ ”

She rolls her eyes at that. “Tell me about figuring out who you are?”

“It’s not easy.”

“Really…” The snark coming off of her is strong enough to push Luke slightly back. “I could have never guessed that.”

He sniggers a bit. “Yeah, this part of it is so much more fun. Yoda knew what he was doing. Mentoring Force Ghost is a blast. Yeah, it’s _hard._ ” Luke chuckles. Then he grows a bit more serious. “Especially if, say, you grew up in a world where no one had any actual plans for you, including yourself, and all you did was sort of drift along from one set of someone else’s expectations to another.”

Rey inclines her head and sighs. “That, I know.”

“Uh huh. And then you get swept up, and everyone has an image of who you’re supposed to be, and everything is immediate, right now, has to be done, and they keep talking about _destiny_ , and…”

Rey’s nodding. “Who were you supposed to be?”

Luke makes a dismissive sound. “Ask me again in a century. Maybe I’ll have figured it out by then.”

“If it’s going to take you a century, how the hell am I supposed to figure it out, now?”

“You’re not. None of us are. You just keep trying new things, and eventually, one of them will likely stick. That was something I always envied about Han. If something didn’t work, he just dropped it and moved onto the next thing.”

“But he kept trying new things?”

“Thief, pod racer, scavenger, scoundrel, smuggler, that was the one he liked best, I think. General, he dropped that one as fast as he could. Respectable businessman, Leia and Lando dragged him into that for a few years, and he got out of it pretty fast, too. Gambler. That was a good one.”

“Father, husband?”

Luke half-smiles. “I knew a lot less about Han as either of those things. Possibly because, unlike Lando or Chewie, who he could talk with about that, I was neither of those things.”

Rey’s eyebrows narrow. “I know he’s out there, but… You still haven’t talked to him, have you?”

“No. It’ll happen, eventually, but… The _first_ lesson Obi Wan taught me was that he got too cocky, decided he could train Vader on his own, and failed miserably at it. And… I walked _right_ into the same trap. I know I heard him say it, but I didn’t _listen._ I was so sure that if I could just… get Ben, that I could understand him, and guide him, and show him where and how he belonged in the Force, and… Especially once I had Tash… I mean… she just _flourished_ , soaking every lesson up like a sponge, and… Ben… He was _Ben._ How could it not work?”

“But Kylo was a person, not an extension of your will, or a mirror of your successes.”

“A person with his own wants and needs and… I was going _hard_ on Han about how he needed to be trained, how leaving him to his own devices, or Han’s, was just setting him up to explode, and… Then I pretty much built the bomb and set it off, so…” Luke looks chagrined at this. “We’ll talk, eventually. All angers cool, eventually, but… Probably still got a few more decades to go.”

“Ah…”

Luke shrugs. “The one thing we’ve got is time.” He nudges Rey’s shoulder. “You’ve got time, too. You don’t have to figure it out. Just… keep trying. Maybe it sinks in and works, maybe it doesn’t. The worst you can do is fail, and… well… It’s not like you won’t have plenty of us to keep you company if you do.”

Rey sniggers at that. “Uh huh.” Then she grows more serious. “How many people die if I fail too badly?”

Luke offers her a half-smile. “Rey, _everyone_ dies. You can’t save _any_ of them. Push it back some, pull it forward maybe, but _you cannot save anyone._ There is a perfect one to one ratio of births to deaths and you are not going to change that, nor should you try.”

“That’s not what I mean…”

“I know, but it’s important to understand that. The universe, the Force, has immutable laws, and we are not above or beyond them. Sooner or later you will fail. It may, and given the scale we play on, probably _will_ get people killed. Sooner or later you will succeed, and that may, and given the scale we play on, probably _will_ get people killed. What was my greatest success?”

Rey shrugs. “Turning Vader?”

“I like to think so. You want to guess how many people died because of that? Arguably more than if I’d failed, he’d cut my head off, and the Emperor crushed the Rebellion then and there.  Thirty years of civil wars, the rise of Snoke, and the destruction of the Hosnian system likely _all_ flow from that moment. All of it ripples well beyond us and… There’s no way to control the wave, no way to foresee where it’s going to go, no possible way to even begin to contemplate how many people any one of your actions will touch, let alone _how_ it’ll touch them. So, yeah, you’ll fail. People will die. You’ll succeed. People will die.” He sighs. “Unless you want to curl into a petrified ball of indecision, it’s probably better to just take responsibility for the ones you are directly responsible for, and lay the rest of them on the Force.”

“Uh huh, and did that work for you?”

Luke looks out over the pond in the cave. She’s not sure what he’s seeing, but her guess is those ripples from saving Vader, or destroying the Death Star. “Some days better than others. That said, I did absolutely no one, including myself, any good hiding off on Ahch-To, so… I have some experience on the petrified ball of indecision side of things.”

“I suppose so.” She pokes at the floor of the cave. “I’m afraid that if I fail, I’ll hurt him. Make his job harder, discredit him... something. So many other people have hurt him, and… I don’t want to be one of them.”

Luke nods. “Han sung that song a lot, too. I don’t recall Leia ever being particularly sympathetic to it. She wanted the harder road with him. Not the easier road on her own. I think Ben feels the same.”

“I know. It’s still terrifying.”

“Yeah. It is. But like pretty much everything else, the more you do something, the better you get at it, the less scary it gets.”

“Does it?”

Luke nods. “At least in my experience.” Luke nods toward… Rey’s living room. She can see it from where they’re sitting. “They’re stirring. Time to get back to them.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Rey’s pulling herself back to her body, when Luke catches her attention one last time. “Rey. The Guardians of the Whills. Chirrut Imwe. Look them up, and give Magiit what you find. She’ll like it.”

“Okay.” And then she’s back in her living room with a collection of kids, all slowly getting their feet under them and brains back in their heads.

 

 

* * *

1/23/2

 

It’d be easier if the decision just… went away. 

She can feel that Kylo sees the value in this. Or at least wants to explore beginning to try it. She can also feel him definitively not pushing it.

It feels a lot like hiding who he was. He won’t tell her to stop. He won’t fuss at her for it. He will make it clear that this is something they’re doing for her, though, and that he’s not sure it’s the best plan.

Granted, the timeframe on this feels a lot narrower. She’s sure they don’t have to make a decision on this _right now_ but she does get the sense that the longer they don’t do anything about it, the less effective eventually doing something will be.

She’s between classes right now, an hour in which she’s supposed to be reading and thinking about how the Divine Accord of Sepulchina understands the nature of the Force (though they call it Spirit) and why it does what it does.

The text in front of her is dry, boring… Written in dense verbiage likely to keep outsiders away.

She flicks off her datapad, closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and settles into the flows of the Force. She knows who she’s looking for, though she’s also a bit nervous about seeking her out.

When she opens them, the light blue glow of her… mother-in-law… though thinking of her as such feels odd, is filling the room.

Leia looks… wryly amused. That’s likely it. She settles back so she’s leaning against the workbench opposite Rey in the comfy chair.

“It’s been a very long time since I used to imagine family chats with a daughter.” She smiles. “And let me guess, having the mother-in-law over for a heart to heart is nothing you ever imagined.”

Rey would have to admit that was true. “I didn’t even know it was a thing when I was younger.”

Leia nods. “I can imagine. I was raised with grandparents, who genuinely liked my parents, so… It was part of my map of what a family looks like.” She holds her hand up, looking through it to Rey. “Granted, I was expecting to be a tad more solid when I did this. Maybe coffee or wine would have been involved.”

Rey shrugs. “You’re the one who chose to go.”

“Maybe. The Force knew my time was over.” Rey’s not sure if that’s true, but she also doesn’t want to debate it. “So…” Leia leads. “Tell me about it.”

And Rey does.

Leia listens, and nods, and winces from time to time, and nods some more, and asks good questions, and after about half an hour says, “So, in an effort to make the First Order—“

“The Order. It hasn’t been the First Order for a while now. And in time it’ll be the Order of the Maji.”

“Uh huh…” Though Leia appears pleased that Rey’s corrected her on that. “So, in order to get people to want to join, and go along with whatever it is your Order is going to do, which, as of right now, you don’t yet know, you and…” it’s only a second’s pause, and Rey likely only notices it because she’s listening intently, “my son,” once she’s said that, Rey supposes that’s better than the Ben that was attempting to go tripping off her tongue, “will package yourselves as a pretty, shiny, storybook version of yourselves and try to win a public relations war before any shooting actually begins?”

Rey’s not sure if that’s right, but she can feel Leia’s intent behind it, so it’s close enough. “Yes?”

Leia thinks about it for a moment. “Honestly, I’ve heard worse plans. I’ve made worse plans. I’ve executed worse plans, and I’ve won with worse plans.” She pauses. “And, really, it’s not like we didn’t… uh… try. For a while there… I mean, Luke was young and pretty and kind of like a Jedi, and… well, we didn’t mind shining cameras on him when he wasn’t paying too much attention. Granted, when he did, we had to stop, because he’d run away, but… There’s probably footage of the awards ceremonies lurking around somewhere. And those were intentional to try and garner public support for the Rebellion. 

“When we were trying to set up the New Republic… Well, it was _obvious_ to any of us who were actually _Rebels_ that restarting the Republic was the way to go. But… That wasn’t obvious to a lot of other people. Just because they didn’t love the Empire didn’t mean they saw any reason for an overarching mega-government, didn’t mean they thought democracy mattered a whit, and didn’t mean that they didn’t want an Empire, just run by someone else.

“And, looking back, the biggest thing I wish I could change was doing a better job of making them _want_ a Republic. Power…” She rubs her lips together. “When I was young and stupid, I thought power was something we could vanquish, and then by coming up with the _right_ answer, everyone else would just immediately see it was the right answer, and they’d all happily come skipping over to me and mine, and we’d just rule and it’d be great.”

“And that’s not how it worked.”

“At all. I’d put so much into Rebelling, I, and most of the rest of us, didn’t have much of a plan for what to do when we won.”

“Did you think you were going to win?”

“I’d certainly hoped so, but… Judging by the lack of plans beyond: Restart Republic, it does appear very few of us thought we would.” She taps her fingers on the workbench. “That said, we did win. And we were young and pretty. And I know some people joined us just for that. Especially after the victory over the first Death Star. People came to be on the winning side. It was enough to get them in the door.” Leia inclines her head. “It wasn’t enough to keep them. So, as a way to intrigue people, as a way to get them to want to know more, being pretty and lovey, the living fairy tale, that’s not a bad plan, but you’re going to need something of substance to keep them there.

“Which gets us back to power. Power is eternal. Maybe it shifts about some, wanders here and there, but at the absolute best you might smooth it out a little more, and make it a bit less concentrated, but you’re not going to get rid of it, or end up with a situation where everyone has an equal amount. Force alone knows we tried, but…

“So, the question is, what do you do with your concentration of power? How do you get people to join you so you can keep said power? I suppose, if you get them to keep joining, your power grows. How do you defend that power? What do you do with people who don’t want you to have it?

“You and Kylo can be as pretty as you like. You can make the galaxy want to be near you by using charm and good looks. It certainly never hurt Lando that he was pretty, smooth, and instantly likable. But, like Lando, and unfortunately, unlike the New Republic, you’ve got to have a plan of what to do with that power.”

She stops there, thinking, and Rey can feel her imagining her ‘old friend.’

“Lando had a great advantage over the New Republic. Two of them really. First of all, he was it. What he said, went, and if you didn’t like it, you could leave. Or he’d fire you. The second one was he wasn’t trying to run the entire galaxy. He had the Corporation, and it had its sub corps, holdings, shell corps, and, of course, the ghost network that didn’t, officially belong to the Corporation, but we all knew it did. He was big enough that others didn’t try to take him out, not directly at least, and he was small enough, and everyone working for him was working for one goal, that he didn’t have to try to get everyone in the universe to go along with one plan.”

“What was his plan?”

“He started with mining, and then moved into refining, and then moved into the engineering to make the things that do the mining and refining, and then shipping to get the stuff he mined and refined around, and then his miners, refiners, engineers, producers, and shippers all needed stuff, so he started to buy up the things that made the stuff they needed. He didn’t have a perfect vertical monopoly, but only because every step of his operation needed _so many_ things.”

“Sounds easy to abuse.”

“It is. History is littered with people who abused the hell out of that sort of a setup. But, scoundrel he was, he also needed to be adored, and didn’t need to be any richer than he was, so not abusing it mattered to him. He made more money than a thousand people could ever spend in a thousand lifetimes, and well-paid employees tend to like their employer, so there was that, too. Plus… Scoundrel that he was, he was also part of the Rebellion, and he learned that lesson well. Even the Empire, backed by a trillion guns, two Death Stars, and a Dark Force wielding monster, couldn’t keep an unhappy population tied down forever.”

“I wish I had known him.”

“I wish you could have known him, too. He was… One of a kind.”

“You miss him.”

“I do.”

Rey’s brows furrow. “Is he… not out there, somewhere?”

“If he is, we haven’t found him, yet.”

“Oh.”

“He wasn’t any sort of Force sensitive, Rey. I… Don’t know, but I don’t think they get to be here.”

“I’ve talked to Han.”

“I know. I have, too. I’ve… been thinking about that, a lot. Since… He’s here. And so many others, just… aren’t. And I don’t know if he’s here because he’s not done, or if his constant, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ was a very low level of Force sensitivity. Maybe we missed his low light, because ours was so bright. Maybe he spent enough time in close contact with other Force sensitives it rubbed off. I don’t know.

“Luke says no one is ever really gone, but… There are some people I’d like to see again, and as of yet, I haven’t found them.”

“Your parents?”

“Yes. Very much so. But that’s not here or there. You’re here for more than my opinion on if The Handsome Prince gambit can work.”

“I am…” Rey looks shy. “How do you… be the Pretty Lady?”

Leia grins at her. “However the fuck you want to be. Don’t let them change you, just… be a shinier version of yourself, and if that means telling a bugger to fuck off when a bugger needs to fuck off, well, you tell the bugger to fuck off, and you make sure your eyeliner is perfect while you do it. The people who want you will say you’re forthright and honest, and the ones who don’t will call you rude and uncultured. But the thing is, you will never, ever, no matter what you do, please the ones who don’t want you to be there, so you might as well just be whatever version of you you want to be for the ones who do want you.”

“That doesn’t sound like being the Pretty Lady.”

Leia waves that away. “There’s a reason why so many people wanted me to be the face of the Rebellion, and it’s not because I was the best strategist, sharpest pilot, or the highest ranked general, or anything like that. I’m… or I was… pretty. And a princess. And Alderaanian… And… That made an attractive image of a downtrodden, horribly abused people rising up to fight injustice and right the universe.  And then we won. Sticking me in front of the New Republic was a PR victory all in and of itself. The little guy won, and I was the perfect ‘little guy.’ I was me, too, always me, but I was also an image, and ideal, a face stuck on posters, and twenty-second sound bites on news holos, and…    

“And, if you are in public. If you chose to be… Mrs. Ren?”

“Mistress Rey of the Maji.”

Leia curls her lip a bit at that. “You might want to work on that, people like catchy titles, and I’m not sure if that is one. Anyway, if you are The Mistress on any level, people will warp your image to fit their needs. There’s nothing you can do about that. You will be all things to all people in all ways.”

“And the only way to avoid that?”

“Is to hide. Han did an… okay… job of it. Once I stopped making him come to public events, he more-or-less faded from view. People eventually forgot about him, stopped asking about if he was going to be the Prince Consort of New Alderaan the way my father had been.”

Rey feels that. “You’re still annoyed by that.”

Leia shrugs. “Politics is a difficult game, and… You can’t do it alone. You need a partner. Someone who’s got your back and just as committed to it working as you are. Someone who shares your vision, and will back your plays, or come up with even better ones.

“I had a great staff. Threepio was more of a chief of staff than anyone could ever ask for. But… I needed Han to be someone he wasn’t willing to be and… Force knows trying to make someone be something they aren’t is always going to be a losing battle, but… I lost, and it still burns.”

Rey nods at that, noting Leia both saying Han wasn’t willing to do it, and that he also wasn’t who she needed. She decides part of the anger is that Leia hasn’t yet let go of the idea that Han just _wouldn’t_ do it for her. Not that he was incapable of it.

Granted, Leia was married to him, and Rey’d spent eight hours with him, so she doesn’t know if he _couldn’t_ do it, or _wouldn’t._  

“Did he… have your back outside of the spotlight?”

“All fifteen minutes I was out of it? Yes.” Leia rubs her temples. “There really wasn’t an out of the spotlight. The New Republic needed more and more and more, and in a lot of cases, apparently I was the only one who could do whatever it was, and if I was doing it, people were watching.”

Rey feels the regret at that. “That’s something you would have changed if you could.”

“In retrospect… The whole bloody thing wasn’t going to implode if I, personally, didn’t handle every third item on the list. But… I was always shit at delegating. Not being in charge makes me itchy in a way I don’t like.”

“I can see that.”

“It doesn’t make you itchy…” She thinks about that. “Never bugged Luke, either. He could just go with the flow.”

Rey’s about to say ‘Light side versus dark’ but she gets the feeling that calling Leia a darksider is _not_ a good idea. “Will he fail without me?”

Leia shrugs. “I don’t know. I do know going in lukewarm and resenting him for it will make everything worse. Either all-in or all-out. Maybe… I don’t know… If Han hadn’t tried at first… Hadn’t gotten my hopes up that maybe he… could… have been my Prince Consort… Maybe it would have been easier. Or maybe I would have always been annoyed by it. I don’t know.

“I do know what we did do, didn’t work.”

Rey nods. “Okay. Thank you.”

Leia smiles a bit. “You’re welcome.”

 

 

* * *

It’s later that night, after dinner, when Rey asks Kylo, “If I wanted to talk to Ellie, on my own, how would I do it?”

He beams at her as he hands over his comm. “I’ll get you your own. Just hold the button, say who you want to talk to, and it’ll connect you.”

Rey nods. She doesn’t say anything else about what she’s been thinking, and he lets her hold her peace.

 

 

* * *

1/24/2

 

This time, they’re on Ellie’s ship. Part of, apparently, learning what a functional, attractive, politically feasible space looks like. And also, part of it is knowing the conversation will be private. Ellie doesn’t know how secure Kylo’s rooms are. She _knows_ hers are airtight.

Rey sees the tea tray, and the pile of nibbles.

Ellie pours and serves her. “Rank isn’t an issue in a situation like this. For private, friendly meetings, one serves in one’s own home.”

Rey nods. She’s not sure if she likes the idea of eating with every serious conversation, but it does seem to help her settle her mind and nerves. She sips the tea, nibbles a cookie, and says, “Tell me more about the Handsome Prince and his Lady.”

Ellie grins at her, a wide, warm, unreservedly pleased smile on her face. “The story varies from place to place and time to time, but the particulars tend to be the same. The Handsome Prince, who may or may not have taken a dark turn, depending on the story, is born to a good, pure, and most importantly _just_ birthright. In some of the stories, he’s the prince in hiding. His birthright stolen by whomever he’s going to conquer.”

“Bartered away by his mother?”

 

 

“Only if she’s the evil-stepmother in the story. Otherwise, Mum’ll be the long-lost, but well-remembered pillar of feminine good and honor.”

Rey’s got a wry look on her face as she says, “Well, reality is already biting the story.”

“Hush. First of all, almost everyone in the galaxy thinks of his Mum as the well-remembered pillar of feminine good and honor. Secondly, we don’t have to recreate the story beat for beat, just… give the impression of it. No matter what, the story begins with the Kingdom in ruins and some sort of evil sorcerer, king, tyrant, merchant, whatever has stolen control from the Good King and Queen.

“Now, our handsome prince is either actively trying to regain the throne of said kingdom or he’s being held in sway by the Evil Tyrant.”

“And that’s the version of the story we’re going to go with?”

Ellie sips her tea. “I’m thinking that’s the one that will most readily mesh with reality.”

“So, what is the Handsome Prince, who’s currently part of Team Evil, going to do?”

“At some point, he’s going to meet his Lady. Something about her, often how pretty she is, but not always... her looks, purity, goodness, _light_ catches his interest, and he decides maybe he doesn’t want to be the henchman of Evil Incorporated.”

Rey flashes her a wry look. “All of his ambitions waylaid by his shaft?”

Ellie chuckles. “We tend not to put it in those terms. Especially not in the versions we tell to children.”  

“Ah.”

“Now at some point, the Handsome Prince rescues his lady love from some terrible fate, winning her adoration and affection, and proving himself worthy of her. He will, of course, in the process of doing this, cease to be the puppet of the Tyrant, and reveal himself as the true heir to King and Queen Good and Merciful.” Ellie smiles again, sips her tea, and says, “What can or will you do with that?”

Rey shrugs a bit, and takes another bite of her scone. “I mean… It… Fits. It’s not like we’d have to… lie about what happened.” She picks at one of the dried fruits on the scone. “The Pretty Lady sounds kind of passive.”

“Yes, well, these are often tales told by men. We can, and will,” there’s a sharpness to Ellie’s look, “make sure no one thinks you were just hanging about waiting to get rescued. Likewise, we’ll make clear that any rescuing on the Handsome Prince’s part wasn’t just about… satisfying the desire of his parts.”

Rey nods. “I certainly didn’t. I bloody well shipped myself to the _Supremacy_ to rescue his ass. And then he rescued mine. Maybe? He rescued me, that’s certain. He killed Snoke… Maybe for himself… Mostly for me. Dark has a hard time staying put. Loyalty requires enough light to find getting into a pattern easy, and getting out of it hard.”

“And of course, both Anakin, and your Kylo, were Jedi once upon a time. Enough light to take the training and succeed at it.”

“Barely, but yes. I was facing Kylo. Snoke was going on and on about how he couldn’t be betrayed, how he owned Kylo on every level there was to own him, and… hate, rage, jealousy, pain… Force, so much pain… All of it was boiling through his skin, and I was sure he was going to cut my head off. I was kneeling, begging him not to do it, and…” Rey’s remembering that moment. “He has that very expressive face.”

Ellie’s nodding. “Everything he was feeling was right on it, I’d bet.”

“The only bit he was hiding was who it was aimed at. That might have been the only time he’s ever tried to bluff, and he pulled it off, perfectly, cut Snoke in half instead of me… But… Is that your rescue? I sent myself to the _Supremacy_ to get Ben back. Threw myself into the path of the monster, because I was sure, like Luke with Vader, I guess, that he wouldn’t sacrifice me to Snoke. And he didn’t.”

“But you didn’t get… Ben?” Rey nods. “Ben back. You thought you were in the story—“

“I’d never heard the story at that point.”

“Well, there’s a reason they’re archetypal narratives. Almost everyone has a version of them somewhere in their minds. In the story, your act of bravery should have gotten you the Good Prince back, or in this case, your Jedi?” Rey nods. “But you didn’t get your wayward Jedi back.

“That’s the story they told all of us, that when Vader killed the Emperor, that he returned to Anakin. He freed himself of his master, and the name of Darth Vader. You’ll forgive that that might have been the official story, but very few people believed it. They were willing to give it lip service, because, after all, he was Luke Skywalker, and that was his father. And it didn’t do to rub the unlikelihood of that story in the face of the only living Jedi.

“You’ll note, though, Kylo’s mother didn’t breathe a word of being Leia Skywalker to anyone, until they forced it out of her. She understood that no one, really, believed that Vader died redeemed. Or that _Vader_ could be redeemed by one last minute act of murder… or love… Your Kylo though, because he didn’t die a minute after taking out Snoke…” Ellie sips her tea and corrals her thoughts.

“Redemption is a lifelong arc. Kylo has a lot of history to pay for, both his own,” Ellie makes a bit of a face at that, indicating that Kylo’s own, personal history isn’t exactly as well-shined as she would have liked, but it’s also not nearly as bad as it could be, “and a lot of history that he inherited from his family, his associations,” which Rey takes to mean Snoke, “and grudges held against him for no good reason,” Rey can feel Ellie thinking of Mirina Frakes, though she’s a symbol of those who would hold the entire Rebellion against Kylo, not just his family.

“If he stays in the roll of the Handsome Prince, and continues along the path he seems to have settled on for right now, he’ll go down as one of the great redemption stories. We can sell the idea of your love as the motive factor behind that story.”

“I’m not sure if the love of me motivated this…”

Ellie just looks at Rey. “Honey, he cut the most powerful Force wielder the galaxy had ever heard of, in half, for you. He spent eight years taking everything Snoke dished at him, then you show up, and six days later, Snoke’s been bisected by a lightsaber. Yes, Kylo benefited greatly from doing that. Yes, given the fact that you didn’t immediately jump into his arms, and,” she delicately clears her throat, “ _reward him_ for his service, amid the pile of corpses, it may have ended up feeling more like something he did for himself, but… He cut Snoke in half for you. His part of the story, where he saves the Princess from the Evil Dragon and proves himself worthy—“

“Saved. He didn’t prove himself worthy… Well… Until he started freeing slaves and… R’Leah… They were giving him crap about the taxes, and… He wanted to just blow them out of the sky. It would have been so easy to just take them out, send a clear message to the rest of the galaxy. Your ‘Do not fuck with Kylo Ren,’ message. But… I told him I’d abide what he did, or not, and… He knew that was something I couldn’t abide, so…”

Rey rubs her lips together. “I took the leap of faith before he’d ‘earned me.’ And he made sure I landed soft.”

Ellie gives Rey’s hand a little squeeze. “That’s any good relationship. You’ll take your leaps of faith, and trust your partner to catch you, and he does. Pat and I have leapt more times than either of us can count, and we’ve always had the other’s back.”

“He had my back. Literally and figuratively. And I’ve had his. And… I guess I got myself into a situation where he found the motivation to get out of a bad situation, for both of us. And then we spent about a year just sort of… growing up, I guess. Together, sort of. We’d talk. He was getting the Order into play, and I was figuring out where I didn’t want to go, which isn’t necessarily as good as where you do want to go, but is better than not having a plan at all.”

Ellie grins at that. “Knowing where not to go is _almost_ as good as where to go, and in many cases it’ll save you even more trouble.”

Rey shrugs. “Okay.”

“I’ve been told you’re the motivation for his slave-freeing idea.”

“When he killed Snoke, he asked me to rule with him, and I… well… uh… pulled a lightsaber on him, and ended up knocking both of us out.”

“Ah. So you turned down his first proposal.”

“Technically, I think that was the second. He told me I needed a teacher before, and that he was offering to be said teacher was unspoken, but I knew he was talking about him.”

Ellie continues to grin as she sips her tea. “It may not be exactly according to script, but this sounds like an epic romance to me.” Another sip. “So, like in many of a different sort of romance, you say no, and run off. He still hadn’t proven himself, or was still in need of some serious changing, or both… This is very common in redemption arc stories. That’s the point of why no one in the wider world believed the Vader redemption story. Just one act of murder isn’t enough. He didn’t _earn_ his redemption.

“So you separate, he had to go off and fix himself up, so he could win you. And then, well, you jumped the gun a bit on the full fixing up, but, well, it’s not like you two would have been the first to get to the fun part before nailing down all of the niggly bits.

“In fact, it’s generally only in stories that couples get all the little bits nailed down properly before jumping in, or at least jumping each other.”

Rey smirks a bit at that. “Did you and Pat have… most everything nailed down?”

Ellie laughs at that, hard. “We had a raging case of hot pants for each other, a contract signed by our parents, and… a common goal of making our family as strong and stable as possible. The details worked themselves out over the next thirty years. By the time we were grandparents, we’d gotten mostly everything ironed out.”

“Mostly?”

“Mostly. It’s been seventy-two years, and, really, if we had _everything_ sorted, it’d be boring.”

Rey laughs at that. Then she touches her hair, aware of the fact that it’s just sort of hanging there, and says, “How pretty does the Handsome Prince’s Lady have to be?”

“You’re more than pretty enough.”

Rey looks at her nails. No polish on them right now, because she’s been working and whatnot. There is dirt under them, because earlier today she was working in the microfarm, digging potatoes. “Do I… always have to be… polished or… elegant… I mean… A lot of the time I’m in ratty clothing, and tired and sweaty, and teaching kids how to do things like dig trenches for pipes or working hard on balance and flexibility and…” 

Ellie sees the dirt under the nails. And the utilitarian hair. And the fact that her clothing is functional, hard wearing, and warm.

“On the downside, no matter what you do, someone will complain about it. If you’re always proper, fashionable, and well-dressed, someone will fuss about you being fake, or spending too much money on clothing or… Something. If you are out and about like this, someone will fuss about you being dirty or plain.

“That said, that’s a particular challenge no woman can win. Because you are a women, people will feel entitled to complain about what you wear and how and why. I know Jon’s giving you ideas, and working on a look for you, and staying in it when you’re in public is probably a good idea.

“And, honestly, take the time, set up an appointment, and talk with Mirina. Jon learned every trick he knows from her, but she’s got libraries full of other ones he’s never before seen. There are… Places… Understandings of power… Where men, and yes, I understand we’re talking about Jon, but he’s not an exception to this rule, just _don’t_ go. I’m sure his mother and sisters slipped a lot by him over the years, and he just wasn’t even near equipped to begin to see what they were doing.

“Between the two of them, they can set you up with an image that I’m sure you’ll be comfortable in, that will get a minimum of commentary from the wider galaxy.”

More time with Mirinia is somewhat intimidating, but… Again, if she’s going to do this, working with someone who wants her to succeed because her success will help her son succeed, should be fairly easy compared to the galaxy at large, who wants her to fail. 

Ellie’s continuing on. “On the other hand, because you are, to a degree, upending the traditional Prince’s Lady, who’s more of a prize than a person, you can likely get away with more range in how you look.

“And there’s a wide range of people who seem to really approve of the idea of a somewhat rough-shod person, who happens to have a lot of good looks and personal charm, slipping into the upper echelons of power.”

“Another story?”

“The orphan who ends up a queen? Yes, there are a _lot_ of versions of that, too. I’ll make sure a datapad with a lot of stories gets delivered to Kylo’s rooms for you.” Ellie takes another drink. “Did you look yourself up?”

“Not yet.”

Ellie nods. “Rey… I don’t know, but I can empathize, on why you don’t want to, why it’s difficult, and what you’re afraid of finding. How both no one and a huge line of some ones are terrifying in different directions. But… If there is anything you need to learn from the family you’ve married into, it’s that secrets make us vulnerable, and secrets you personally don’t happen to know are even more dangerous.

“Since we’re building an image, things that can damage that image can cause trouble. If you have family, and you don’t know that, and they pop up, and decide to make a plausible claim that you’re an ungrateful little tramp who ran away and joined the First Order…” Rey’s wincing. “People will lie. They’ll do it for money, power, kicks, attention, and sheer perverse cussedness. Unfortunately, your home world no longer exists and the people who can verify you spent your formative years in Jakku are gone. Though, given what you’ve said about them, that’s likely to your benefit.”

Rey looks uncomfortable about that. “People will just… forget… about what he did to Jakku?”

Ellie smirks a bit at that. “Oh, no. They absolutely won’t. All in all, it likely was a good decision, at least as a power play, on his part.”

Rey looks horrified at that.

Ellie shakes her head a bit, and takes a sip of her tea. “Tell me how you felt when he told you he’d done it.”

Rey shifts, uncomfortably. “I… Sick?”

“Not how you were supposed to feel. How you actually felt. That first, full brush of understanding it. When you were just feeling, not thinking.” There’s a look on Ellie’s face, and Rey’s not sure what it means, but it almost makes her feel like Ellie knows her better than she knows herself.

“Pleased.” Rey says it very quietly.

Ellie nods. “And for more than just revenge, I’d bet. Pleased that he’d done it. For you. Your man loved you so much he killed everyone he could find who’d ever done you wrong. Proud of his power. Your man _could_ go kill everyone he could find who’d ever done you wrong. Strong. He laid his power at your feet, in your service. You liked that, didn’t you?”

Rey bites her lip, and looks away from Ellie to the planets spinning beyond the transteel wall. “I shouldn’t.”

“That’s likely true, if we were angels and not people, but we’re people, so let’s stick to what you actually felt. Pleased, powerful, cherished, aroused…”

Rey squirms a bit. She feels naked and open in a way she’s normally not, especially with someone who isn’t Kylo. “I’m not sure about that last one.”

“Really?” The look on Ellie’s face makes Rey wonder what, exactly, Pat’s done in the past that involved having her back.

“Uh… we were… close… when he told me, so… I’m not sure how to sort that out.”

Ellie grins. “Interesting pillow talk. That said, those feelings are… normal. Common even. If you chose to let that story out, billions of people will, just at the idea of it, feel those same sensations, or the desire for them.” Ellie sips her tea again. Then she shakes her head a bit. “Beyond your own feelings of how ‘moral’ people are supposed to act, there is no downside on this story for you or him.

“You are literally a woman of such great worth that he’d obliterate an entire planet for you. And he is a man of such power that having desired a planet to cease to exist, he made it do so.

“For him, in many cultures he’s done the absolute, base minimum of what honor demands in this sort of situation, and honestly, he likely should have sent a bunch of Stormtroopers down to grab the man who bought you so he could have personally disemboweled him in front of you, before blowing the planet up, and after hunting down anyone else who’d routinely done business down there around the time you were hurt, and dragged them back down there to die, too.

“In much of the galaxy, a huge part of what it means to be a husband is that you are a man who will provide for and protect your wife and children. Your status as such depends on how well you do those things, and how clearly you’ve taken care of what’s yours.

“In wider parts of the galaxy, what it means to be a King, is that you are the man who will provide for and protect your people. Now, if he’ll blow up a planet for you, the thinking goes that he will protect his people, too. The attacks on Qualee sealed that idea. 

“If there is going to be an _ideal_ of Master Ren, a sense of how to use his dark and violence in a way that makes people want to be near him, protector is it.

“So, no people will not forget Jakku. Nor should they.”

Rey thinks about that. “And… The Prince’s Lady… She’s… the one who bends that violence toward protection, away from destruction?”

“Maybe. Did she?”

And again Rey feels the plasteel of the deck below her knees, and sees Kylo looking down at her, saber in hand, as Snoke droned on and on.

“Yes.”

Ellie’s pleased with that. “Like I said a little bit ago. There are spheres of power where men just don’t go. Many of them don’t even understand that these spheres exist, because when they’re used well, they believe that the ideas and motivations and maneuvers are all their own. And sometimes, they mock these spheres, or say they aren’t really power.” Ellie rolls her eyes at that. “They’re wrong about that, but, well, being wrong is rarely the sort of thing that’ll stop a motivated man. Much, generally, to the detriment of all involved.

“But the wise man understands that power flows in many directions and through many channels, and he takes advantage of all of them.”

“Pat?”

“The two of us wouldn’t have made it this far if we hadn’t understood, and valued, what the other one could bring to the table.

“Let’s take our Jon for a moment, who, I understand, is significantly better-trained for this sort of job than you are, but, for reasons I’m certain you aren’t immediately grasping, isn’t suitable for this sort of thing.”

Rey nods. That sums it up well. Though not entirely. “How about, I’m not seeing why _I’m_ suitable for it if he isn’t.”

“Ah… Okay. Human societies, generally, not always, but generally tend to arrange themselves in one of three ways, patriarchies, where the people running things are generally, but not always, men. Matriarchies, where the people running things are generally, but not always, women. And egalitarians, where anyone might be in any place of power.”

Rey thinks about that for a moment. She’s been studying religions and that tends to go with history and politics, so… “I’m familiar with the ideas. The Order is egalitarian.”

Ellie shakes her head. “The Order may eventually be egalitarian, but right now it’s borrowing very heavily from the Empire which was a patriarchy.”

Rey’s eyes narrow. It’s clear she understands what Ellie’s saying, but not necessarily seeing why.

“It’s not just that a lot of the upper echelons of the Order are, at this point, Empire left-overs, it’s that the First Order’s extremely top-heavy, highly structured, and rigid training mechanisms are still shadowing the Order.”

“That doesn’t sound like a sex difference.”

“I don’t know if it is one or not, but, in general rigid structures and patriarchies tend to go hand in hand. Matriarchies can also be extremely rigid and rule following, but they’ll often go about it in a different way, and egalitarians seem to have a difficult time with rules and structures and whatnot, because they also seem to have a difficult time with the idea that some people are supposed to be followed without question.”

Rey purses her lips.

“We’ll get into this more, later. For the time being, the Order is a patriarchy. Part of that means it has rigid codes and rules and places for everyone.

“Thus, not only is Jon a man, but, he’s got rank and you don’t. As the Lt. Colonel, or the Grand Marshal, or wherever he chooses to end up, he is part of the official structure of the Order, and is known as a hand of the Master. Anything that goes to him goes through _official_ channels, and is part of the record. Because he is part of the diplomatic wing, speaking, hinting, sleeping, or whatever with him, is seen as speaking, hinting, sleeping, or whatever with _The Order._ ”

“Did the people at the First Year Party know that?”

“Oh, absolutely. I’m sure all three of the ones who ended up with Jon understood exactly what they were doing when they shifted their focus away from Kylo to him. I’m sure _Jon_ understood what he was doing with that, too. He knows how to play the game, he’s just not… well-suited for some of it.

“An entreaty to Jon is… public, for lack of a better word. It’s real and official. One state talking to another. Because that’s how power flows between men of rank. An entreaty to you is unofficial, it’s one person talking to another one, feeling things out, seeing if an idea is worth moving the men with ranks into place to make it official.

“This feeling things out… This is where most diplomacy, most deals, most of the work that makes states function, happens. This is where the role of the Queen comes in in a patriarchy. It’s her job to get the players into place, so that when it’s time to move the _official_ people in, everything is set.”

“That’s what you do.”

“Yes, and I do it _spectacularly._ And to do that, people need to be _comfortable,_ ” Ellie nods to the tea set, and looks around at her very comfortable rooms.

“People are generally, more comfortable with ‘their own type.’ What that means will vary from person to person, but most women are more comfortable with another woman. A sense of shared experience or what have you. Jon can’t… take advantage of that, and while I know he has much more experience with women-only places than most men, he’s still a man, and when he’s around, ladies will… tailor their words and topics of conversation, and now that he has rank, they will tailor it further, while playing whatever games they can with him.”

“They’ll see me, and… assume I… know these things.”

“Yes. Our physical shapes effect how people interact with us. It’s, again, part of sending the message, and managing how people relate to you.”

“What if I don’t know… How to… I don’t know, be a woman? The way you mean it.”

Ellie smiles. “That, too, can be useful. People will have a set of expectations for you, and defying them allows you space to maneuver, and put them off balance. Shift how they have to interact with you, and how they see you.

“Ignorance is a limited virtue. You can only play that card so many times before people become aware of that fact that, if you’re _still_ ignorant, you’re too stupid to be in the game. That said, you can, if you choose, use it to your advantage. If you… intentionally misunderstand something, you can force people to make themselves ‘more plain.’ Say the things they’d prefer not to say, or in your case, get them to think about the things they shouldn’t think.”

“People who think I’m… rough and stupid—“

“Ignorant. Lacking in information. It’s abundantly clear just by being near you, you aren’t stupid.”

“Okay, ignorant. They’ll… let things slip. Say and think what they shouldn’t.”

“Exactly. Depending on where we are and what we’re doing, Pat will play drunk at public functions. People will say things they shouldn’t to a man in his cups, assuming he won’t remember. Likewise, they’ll trust things a drunk says, more than they should, assuming that he’s letting things slip that he shouldn’t.”

Ellie pauses there, glances at the chrono, and then says, “Back to ignorant, and your family. That was a bit of a digression we took there. Information you don’t have, don’t control is dangerous. Which is why you need to look yourself up. Do a DNA search. If you find people, we’re going to need to vet them. See who they are and what they’ve been up to and how they managed to lose you.

“I assume, that if you find someone, you want to be in control of how eventually meeting them turns out. It’s one thing if a liar comes out of the woodwork and they’re just full of it. It’s an entirely different thing if they can prove a DNA link to you.”

“If they can?”

“You search now. Before you’re well-known. You find them. Then you have the power. You get to find out all about them, first, and then chose to seek them out, or not. Trust me, if you find any DNA links, by the time you’re ready to do anything about it, we’ll know everything from their shoe size, to which political groups they support, to the last time they flossed their teeth. You will not fly into a meeting with whomever you may find, blind. That’s the least we can do for you.”

Ellie reaches out and gently squeezes Rey’s hand. “If you find a link, a parent or sibling or… whomever, and we do the legwork first, you’ll know if you are the long lost daughter/sister/niece they desperately want to see again, and then you can go to them, and make the happily-ever-after come true. And if they are rank bastards who threw you away… Well, if that’s the case, you’ll get to decide if they are going to regret that decision for the rest of their extremely short lives.”

“I… wouldn’t…”

Ellie nods. “It’s one thing if it’s outside of your hands, something that’s happened in the past. It’s another thing to choose to wield the blade for the sake of vengeance.” She lays her hand on Rey’s. “Here’s another angle of looking it up, first, and having us vet anyone you may find. Just because you don’t want to murder whoever may have sold you—“

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s… wrong?”

“Something you feel is inappropriate to your understanding of how a good person behaves?”

Rey nods.

“I understand. Now, do you think your Kylo will have any reservations about that?”

Rey’s mouth opens and closes. She… doesn’t know how Kylo might react to the idea that the people who sold her might be out there somewhere. “He thinks they’re dead.”

“And you hope he’s right?”

“He saw… I’ve… They were people, and they sold me for alcohol, and they died. If they… weren’t my parents… That would be one thing. If they’d stolen me or something… But… If they’d bought me or… I know, and he does, that they are dead. If there’s another layer of betrayal behind that…”

Her eyes are bright, and quivering sadness is pouring off of Rey.

“Okay. We… don’t need to go there. Not now. If you’ve both seen it… There probably isn’t anything else,” Ellie says. “Not on that level. But there may be grandparents or aunts and uncles, half-siblings. And there absolutely will be thousands of people claiming you are theirs, so… You need to look.”

Rey takes the deep breath. “Okay.” She glances at the chrono, too. “It’s about time for me to get the kids together.”

“Lessons?”

“Sort of. It’s my night to keep an eye on them while they make up their supper. They cook for themselves, but it’s a good idea for an adult set of eyes to be hovering in the background.”

Ellie smiles at that. “A _very_ good idea. One day, I’ll tell you the story of the Pat, Eliza, Seirra, and James Jr. making my birthday breakfast for me.”

“Eliza, Seirra, and James Jr.?”

“That was a long time ago. Those are the first three of the grandbabies. And Pat, Popop as they called him, was in charge of the ‘babies.’ They were six, four, and three. He and James Sr., our Elaine’s husband, were ‘letting the ladies have a lie in’ and in charge of getting breakfast ready.”

Ellie’s quivering with mirth at the idea of this story.

“They didn’t burn down the house, did they?”

“No. But, let’s just say, it was a very good thing there was an adult eye on things, because James Jr., at three years old, decided that flour was white and fluffy, and had just grabbed the open bag of it, and was just starting to shake it around the whole house when his Popop grabbed it and him, saving them from a blizzard of baking material covering the entirety of the downstairs.”

Rey does laugh a bit at Ellie’s image of a much younger Pat, with a full head of dark hair, a significantly less round belly, a small child under one arm, and a bag of flour in the other hand.

“How long ago was that?” Rey asks.

“James Jr. is now Popop to James IV.”

“Oh.”

“James IV doesn’t talk much. He’s only got four words, and is barely toddling about, but… It’s been a while.”

 

 

* * *

Rey opens up the datapad, and brings up herself. And promptly finds that she can’t access herself on this pad. She sighs at that, but… Well, they were going to put more security in place. She grabs Kylo’s personal pad, and looks herself up.

This time it works.

The first thing she does is put her fingerprints in. The computer does its thing while she waits. And after a moment it tells her there are no matches.

Then she does her retinas. And, again, after ten minutes, there are no matches.

Whomever gave birth to her didn’t register her. More proof, if it is that, that the people who sold her likely were her parents. Likely… Miserable drunks likely wouldn’t have taken the minute necessary to put her finger marks and eyes into the system, along with a name and birthday or birthplace.

But… maybe… If you’d stolen a child, a young one, a baby, you likely wouldn’t register her, either. Wouldn’t want to make it easier for her parents to find her. Especially if they had their DNA in the system, waiting for someone to match.

Rey takes a deep breath. She finds a knife, pricks her fingertip, and lays a drop of blood on the sensor on the datapad.

That drop won’t find her. If her eyes and prints aren’t in the system, her blood won’t be, either. But it might find others, related to her, who are in the system. It might find people who put themselves in the system, hoping one day she’s match to them.

It whirls for a _very_ long time, zipping along, comparing her DNA to everyone else in the system.

Rey tries to imagine people, a mother and father, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, all of them looking for her, all of them mourning the child they didn’t get to raise.

But she can’t imagine it. Her mind won’t form the images.

“I’ll be back, Sweetheart…” but… Like Kylo said, it’s her voice in the memory.

She blinks as the datapad chirps at her. No match.

Of the hundreds of billions of people in this system, not a single one of them shares a single great-grandparent with her.  

And she’s not sure if that’s heartbreaking or relieving. 

A line a billion girls long, and they’re all just her… How literal is that image supposed to be?

There were parents. She remembers screaming for them. She remembers… A voice… that wasn’t hers. Not words, but… Her hair, she wore it in three buns. Someone had to put it in those buns the first time. Infants don’t do their own hair.

There had to have been parents. Human beings just don’t spontaneously generate in the desert.

And they had to have come from somewhere, but…

Apparently not the sort of somewhere that they left records of themselves.

 

 

 

* * *

1/25/2

 

It’s dinner again. And this time, Kylo’s chatting away, keeping up a stream of commentary on the meetings he’s had.

He absolutely knows that Rey is, at best, only aware of his voice, but that’s fine.

That’s why he’s doing it. Right now, she’s thinking, and feeling, and just wants him nearby, not really focused on her.

So, he’s more or less talking to himself, with her in the room, letting her think/feel.

And, as food wraps up, and as he’s stretched out everything he’s got to say about his meetings well beyond the reasonable point, he feels it when she’s ready to say something, so he shuts up.

“If we’re going to do this, I want something for us.”

He nods. He knows what _this_ is. She’s been thinking about it intently for days now. “Okay, uh… What sort of something for us?”

“There’s got to be some time when we’re not The Master and Mistress. There’s got to be time for just Kylo and Rey. Not… six minutes here and an hour there. We can’t _always_ be on all the time fixing every problem.”

“Like… A few days a month off, something like that?” He thinks he can probably swing that. His people have off time, and off shifts. He could have off time, too.

“Yeah. Something like that. Just you and me, and maybe the Maji, or maybe just us, and… If we go somewhere, we don’t get recognized, and we’re not… being the Handsome Prince and His Lady.”

“I’m good with that.” He stops there for a moment. “I… Okay, speaking about saying things out loud, I assume you know this, but… I don’t want to be the Master forever.”

She nods. She’s not sure exactly when he began to see a future where he wasn’t going to be the Master, likely about the time he figured out that Lord and Lady Ren, The Emperor and Empress of the Galaxy wasn’t ever going to happen. But she did notice it.

“I know.”

“Good. Uh…” Pieces of the shape of _The Master,_ what that means as a political reality, begin to take clearer shape in Kylo’s mind. “There’s a bit less than six years to the first elections. Then five years after that to the next ones. So… How about, we’ll be the Handsome Prince and His Lady, and then, a year before the second election, I’ll announce that I’m stepping down, let other people run, and, in addition to making sure we’ve got a few days a month where we’re just us, come the second set of elections, we’re done. We’ll retire or… Whatever. Stick around long enough for the new Master to come into office, and then that’s it?”

Rey thinks about that. “So… a bit less than eleven years?”

“A bit less than eleven years, and then we can… go be Maji, or… I don’t know, travel. Just be Kylo and Rey. Get a good ship, make our money gambling, or something, I don’t know, maybe the Master and Mistress have a pension or something, and take our children to see all the things we never got to see, do the things we didn’t get to do, but think they’ll like.”

That’s a lot more ‘for us’ than Rey was thinking, but she likes the idea. More than that, she likes the idea of a definite end time to Lady Ren. Eleven years. She can to _anything_ for eleven years if she knows that at the end of eleven years, they’ll be done.

If they’ll be done. “Do you think they’ll let us go?”

Kylo shrugs. “How would they stop us? I’ll let them know I’m going, and if no one attempts to replace me, one day we’ll just be gone, and… Kinear—“

“Who likely won’t be alive in eleven years.”

Kylo doesn’t love that idea, but Rey’s likely correct. It’s not unheard of a human to live to be 105, but it’s not common. It is unheard of for a 105 year old to have enough stamina and metal clarity to run something like the Order. “Or whomever will take over. I mean… If we do an even borderline competent job of this, someone will want to take it over when we leave, right?”

“I’d think so.”

He lays his finger on her Order of the Maji pendent. “Eleven years?”

She nods. “Eleven years.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey All... So, apparently, somewhere, buried in the terms and conditions, and possibly, not there when I signed up three years ago, is a clause on Wordpress about how you can't use it for porn, and porn is defined as pictures of people fucking.
> 
> So, uh, yeah, they just suspended my blog, without even sending me a note. So, in Dec, where tumblr at least gave us a little notice, before the purity purge, I ported my tumblr stuff to Wordpress, (which at the time was one of the suggested places to put your NSFW stuff, sigh...) anyway, I am, once again (grrrr...) reuploading my stuff. This time to my pillowfort, where with any luck, a good fucking long time will pass before they decide to go on some stupid purity crusade and wipe out all the smut.
> 
> My story stuff on Wordpress was all safe. I wrote all of that on Word and it's saved. My story art, likewise, was safe. But my art posts, my behind the scenes posts, my thoughts on what I'm doing with this story, those are gone. I wrote them on the Wordpress editor and immediately uploaded them. 
> 
> Anyway, I've got my art for Public/Private reuploaded, and once I get this chapter done, I'll start taking a whack at Rumors/Gossip, and eventually get to Tension/Balance.
> 
> In the meantime, if you want to find my uncensored fan stuff, I'm on pillowfort.io/kerylraist. (And I'll be spamming the crap out of it with images the next few days.) I still post on tumblr on occasion, too, (mostly reblogging other people's stuff) but much less often. kerylraist.tumblr.com. And, for kicks and giggles, ko-fi.com/kerylraist.
> 
> Oh, and one last bit, next week, clear the calendar, find a spot where the kids won't bug you, and lock the door, it's REALLY NSFW!


	12. Dildo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, yeah, in case the title didn't tip you off. REALLY NSFW!

1/26/2

 

The next day, Jon’s in Kylo’s office. He’s gotten through the update on finding someone else to completely take over Tactical Design, which Kylo cares about, in the sense that it’s something that has to happen to get Jon to move up to his head of Diplomacy, but he’s not exactly riveted by, but…

Anyway, when Jon finishes with that, he ends with, “Am I boring you?”

“Sorry. Uh… Distracted,” which is true. He spends a few moments explaining Ellie’s Handsome Prince and Lady plan, and then wraps it up with adventures in eating out and movies, and that part of seeing the movie was attempting to locate something like the sort of grand romance they’re trying to be, and then that gets him thinking about the joke they didn’t understand, so he says, “What’s a dildo?”

Jon just about chokes at that, but after he gets breathing again, says, “Possibly the most ironic question you could ask me.”

Kylo blinks.

“You really don’t know?”

He rolls his eyes. “No, I get my kicks by seeing if I can get you to swallow your tongue. We could feel from the context it was some sort of sex joke, but…”

Jon asks in disbelief. “ _What_ movie did you see?”

“The Mix Up?”

Jon blinks and decides he might have to go watch it. “I didn’t realize it was that risqué.”

Kylo’s still looking at him.

“A dildo is a fake shaft, Kylo. One made of plexiplastic or glass or something like that.”

Kylo thinks for a second, and then his lip starts to quiver, and then he starts to laugh. Finally, “Oh! Yeah… That makes more sense,” comes out of him. Then he laughs harder, getting what Jon meant by ‘ironic.’

Jon looks _very_ amused by that. “I’ll bet. So… uh…” He’s got a very naughty smirk on his face. “You were watching a movie with dildos in it? With Rey? In public? That _can’t_ have been on purpose.”

Kylo sighs. He’s not _that_ sheltered. “If one had been on screen, I’m pretty sure I could have figured out what it was. They kept making fun of the one character by calling him one. ‘Just like the real thing, but plastic.’ They mentioned that a lot, and the actor was… yeah, just too perfect and plastic to be real, so… The nickname makes sense now.”

Jon sniggers a bit at that. “Oh my.”

“It was supposed to be a romantic comedy, but besides the sex scenes, we were both so bored we wanted to cry.”

“Well, there are movies that are just collections of sex scenes with not much plot and less dialog, often featuring dildos, but generally you watch them in private, or maybe with a few very close friends, on your personal holovid player, in your personal rooms.”

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit before saying, “When the first making out scene started, we were… uh… well, we didn’t know it was going to end where it did, so we were a little surprised to see that apparently that’s something people watch in public.”

“Generally, no. I mean… it’s a big galaxy, and there’s likely somewhere you can see shows like that in public, just not anywhere I’ve ever been. Also, there are good romantic comedies, but since the one you and Rey went to was by a director who is kind of famous for making ridiculously sappy, overly-dramatic pap, with stupidly complicated plot lines that depend on coincidence to solve, maybe you’d want to avoid them in the future.”

“So, that’s not the whole genre?”

“It’s a sub-genre. Some people really like overly dramatic papfests. Me not among them.”

Kylo nods. “I can understand that. The write up didn’t sound terrible, but… _fuck_ , was it!”

Jon’s nodding along. “So, do you want to… give Rey some ideas of what this story looks like?”

“Yeah. I read stories as I child, and my nannies told me some, but I don’t really remember them.”

“I’ll get some holovids for you. Do you have a proper projector? You miss so much if you try to watch them on the screen of your datapad.”

“No.”

Jon nods, and then thinks a bit, and says, “How serious are you about this?”

Kylo shrugs a bit. “Why?”

“How packed is your and Rey’s schedule for the near future?”

Kylo just looks at him. “Packed, enough. I think I’ve got some free time in… I don’t know, ten days?”

Jon’s nodding. “Check with Rey, grab a day both of you are free.”

“Again, _why?_ ”

“Because we’re going to book one of the cinemas, and I’m going to have a chat with my Mum and Ellie, and we’re going to sit you two down and watch some shows. If you’re going to do this, you might as well have a _good_ mental image of it, and… I mean… You’re the Master, Kylo. If C8 offers to buy out a cinema for a day, not only will they bend over backwards to make sure you and Rey have the best time possible, but they will absolutely play any movie I suggest to them.”

“Okay… Let me… _Hey…_ ” He switches from his verbal conversation to a mental one with Rey.

_Busy. Give me a moment._

“She’s doing something she needs to concentrate on. Tell me what else is going on.”

“We got a signed contract for our mediation services!”

Kylo lets out a very un-Masterish whoop of pleasure.

Jon grins at him. “I may have done that, too, when Threepio told me.”

“Who is it and what are we mediating?”

“Unthar K’Aar. He’s the leader of a fairly unstable system, and when his son was alive he had a decent plan in place for passing on his throne to him. Because his son was bigger, badder, better armed, and more willing to kill people than the leaders of any other faction. Unfortunately, his son died last year, leaving him with identical twin grandsons. Traditionally first born follows the footsteps of the last King, but no one’s entirely sure which one of them is oldest. To make matters worse, his different tribal heads are rallying behind different grandsons, and because no one knows which one is older, they split daddy’s ships and holdings down the middle.”

“And we’re going to?”

“Determine who the best man is, and offer to back him. Both factions are more than powerful enough to cause local trouble, but not powerful enough to withstand twenty minutes of CityKiller bombardments. K’Aar’s hoping that by bringing us in to mediate, and then as enforcement of the mediation, that we’ll be strong enough to stop the plotting until whichever grandson can build up his own forces enough to hold his own throne.”

Kylo’s smiling. “So…”

“You’ll do some studying, learn a bit about their history and culture. We’ve got a few experts also digging deep to _really_ learn it. Then you’ll talk to K’Aar, get a feel for his concerns and where he wants to see things go. Talk with the boys. Feel them out. Then you and the experts sit down, figure out which one to pick, and offer up binding mediation.”

“And people will pay us to do this?”

“ _Well._ ” Jon is beaming. “They will pay us _well_ to do this. And, just to sweeten the deal, if they accept the offer we give them, we’ll get free access to put recruiting stations on all of their planets.”

That makes Kylo even happier. 

“And, we haven’t set that up, yet, but my mom,” he sounds wary, “and apparently, independently of her, Threepio, have both come to the conclusion that we should offer embassy space here to any system that wants it. Give them a place, for a fee, to do the business that’s either too dangerous, or too messy, to host on their own soil. If this goes well, we’ll see if they want an embassy on the _Supremacy,_ too. Start getting some full-time dwellers onto the I-Deck.”

Kylo’s nodding. He likes that idea. As he’s about to verbalize his approval, Rey says, _Free now,_ in his head. _What’s going on?_

Kylo keeps looking at Jon, trying to maintain some level of focus on him, so he’s not leaving his present surroundings to talk to Rey.

“She’s back?”

And apparently failing miserably at it.

He nods, and thinks to her. _Jon’s suggested that was a particularly bad example of a romantic comedy. And that good ones exist. On top of that, he’s also suggesting that since Ellie’s asking us to play the parts that a lot of people have as stories in their heads, that maybe we should sit down and watch some of the stories._

_Okay… does he have the stories?_

_He’s got a list of them, and is fairly sure that any of the cinemas on the_ Supremacy _will bend over backwards to show them for us. So, can you arrange your schedule ten days from now to watch some shows with me?_

He can feel her thinking through that.

_Are these shows that are appropriate to bring the kids to?_

_Would you want to?_

_I know Rose would like to see some of them. Finn and Poe will be off then. So that leaves the two of us as the resident adults, so…_

_I’ll ask._

“Is this the sort of thing children can watch?”

Jon ponders. What he knows about children would fit into a thimble. A small one. “Maybe? Does she want to bring the rest of the Maji?”

“We’re low on adults right now, so yes.”

“I can’t promise it, but at least as best as I remember the movies I’m thinking about, kids should be able to watch them.”

_Jon thinks it’ll be okay. He’s not certain, but hopeful._

_We can give it a try. Let me know when you’re in the Cinema, and I’ll bring them to you. And… We’ll watch some shows._

He’s smiling at that. _Good._  “We’ll watch some shows.”

 

 

* * *

At dinner he says to Rey, “Jon tells me a dildo is a fake shaft.”

She thinks about that for a moment, finally figures out why he’d say that to her, and then starts to giggle hysterically, _finally_ getting the on-going joke of that movie. After a moment, and rubbing the tears from her eyes, she says, “What do you use one for?”

Kylo blinks at her. “Uh…” He can feel himself blushing, and he knows she did that intentionally. He shoots her a little, none to hot, glare. “Somehow, I didn’t think to ask Jon _that._ ”

She’s grinning at him. “I bet he’d know.”

“He probably does, which is part of why I’m not going to ask.”

She’s looking at him intently, with a lot of amusement in her face, and she’s not _asking,_ but he can feel the desire and challenge in her gaze. He narrows his eyes a bit, and finally says, “Are those puppy eyes?”

“Rose would have to see them to tell me. Why, is it puppyish?”

“I’m not sure.” He eats a few bites of his salad. “Why do you want me to ask so badly?”

She grins at him. “I have no idea, but just the idea of it… makes me feel good.” And it does. In an… she doesn’t know… odd sort of way, maybe. It’s definitely sexual, but her mind’s more involved with this than her body. Either way, though, she likes it.

“You like the idea of me talking with Jon about fake shafts?” He looks like he can’t possibly begin to believe this.

Rey shrugs. Put that way it does seem a bit silly, maybe. She still _really_ likes it though. “I’m not saying it makes sense, but… Uh… Yes.”

He closes his eyes, sighs, and then bites his lip, because, okay, it’s not doing anything for him at first blush, but if she _really_ likes it, and he can feel it quivering off of her, eager and attentive… He attempts to imagine even beginning that conversation with Jon. The image won’t form. He sighs again. “I honestly don’t think there’s enough vodka in the galaxy to get me to have that conversation with him.”

That makes Rey laugh. And Kylo’s pleased to see that she’s not… bothered… disappointed by the fact he’s not willing to comm Jon and ask. “Okay. But if there is…”

He shakes his head, chuckling a little. “I’ll let you listen in. Hell, if there is, I’ll invite you to join in.” He thinks about it. “Maybe you could have the conversation, and I’ll just keep you company.” He ponders that. Rey talking about fake shafts… with Jon… okay, maybe he can kind of see what she likes about this. Sort of. If he squints.

She thinks about that. Talking with Jon about it, herself, feels mostly just informative. She might go do it, because, well, he likely does know how they work and what you do with them. Then she thinks about that more and decides that might be like measuring her naked for undergarments and fall under the ‘I’m only human, please don’t tempt me,’ category. “Doesn’t seem to be having the same impact.”

He shrugs a bit. 

After a few bites, in which he can feel her happily imagining a very… intense, and apparently, at least to her, quite sexy conversation between him and Jon, he decides to turn the idea a bit. “You’re the one who’s curious… what would you do with one?”

She blinks at him. “Uh…” She puts her fork down. “I’m not entirely sure what one even looks like, so…”

He half-shrugs, too. “I’m not either, but if it’s a fake shaft, we’re both acquainted with the general shape and size it’s got to have, so… What would you want to do with it?”

Rey bites her lip. Now she’s blushing, a bright, pretty pink creeping from her cheeks to her ears and collarbones.

Kylo’s grinning at her. “Oh, you’ve got some ideas, don’t you?” He knows that blush. That’s her aroused blush, and when that comes up, he knows a good time is in the offing.

“I… Maybe… We could… look it up in the library. Or… Rose says there are channels that just show sexy pictures on our holovid viewers. We could… Get a better idea of what one is and what people do with it.”

He quickly stabs his salad a few times, gathering a much larger bite of supper than he’d usually attempt to put into his mouth in one go. “Eat fast.”

She sticks her tongue out at him, but does as told.

 

 

* * *

Putting ‘dildo’ into the search feature of their library is an education in and of itself.

Once the images start coming up, Rey says to Kylo, “So, apparently that statement about having to know the general shape and size…”

He’s nodding, eyes wide, apparently having greatly underestimated the variation available in this particular endeavor.

He rubs his lips together. “Do you think they’re all for humans?”

She’s looking at… well, maybe the scale is off, but even if it is… “I rather hope not. That just looks… painful.”

As best he can tell it’s bigger around than his fist, so… “Yeah. I mean… maybe… some people like that…” After all, some of the drawings they’ve looked at certainly indicated that some people really like… big… gargantuan… shafts. Just, both of them thought that was firmly in the fantasy camp, and not something anyone would attempt to… well… make real.

But, as they keep scrolling through, size isn’t the only apparent variation. The only thing they seem to have in common is they’re all roughly cylinders. And roughly covers a lot of territory. And they come in apparently, not only every possible imaginable color, but way more textures than either of them would have imagined.

And it looks like some of them _move._

After several minutes of looking and scrolling, Kylo says to Rey, “So… you still want to find out what people do with them?” He’s certainly curious, but… He also wouldn’t mind remaining ignorant of anything involving the ones bigger than his forearm, or the ones that look like tentacles, or the ones that very clearly are the phallus of something that isn’t even remotely human, and doesn’t look like they’ve got any business fucking them.

She grins at him. It’s clear she wants to. “Do you?”

A lot of them are sort of sleek plexiplastic or glass or metal, and he certainly wouldn’t mind seeing some of them in action. Especially if the people playing with them happen to be women. “I’ll admit to being a bit on the intrigued side. But I also want to be able to back out if it looks painful.”

“We can do that.”

He grins at her, and keys up the search feature. _Women with dildos._

She laughs at that. “You just want to look at pretty girls playing with them.”

Kylo smirks at her. “So do you.”

Her grin spreads. “And maybe some pretty boys.”

His eyebrows come together as he looks at her. He can, probably, figure out why _one_ boy might play with one. But if you’ve got more than one guy… “Why would boys, plural, you know, more than one of them, together, use one?”

She shrugs and then giggles. “That appears to be one of those questions there isn’t enough alcohol to get you to ask Jon, so I guess we’ll just have to look.”

He shrugs a bit, and then rolls onto his back, scooting up in their bed a bit, before saying, “You know what? It’s too damn cold here for this.” And a heartbeat later, they’re in his rooms on the _Supremacy_ where they can be comfortably naked above the blankets.

A heartbeat after that, they’re naked, and resting against the pillows, his legs stretched out in front of him, her between them. His chin is on her shoulder, and she’s holding the library pad before typing in, _sex with a dildo._

_5,980 responses._

 

 

Before she clicks on one, she says to Kylo, “Apparently, we’re not the only people who might like the idea of this.”

He kisses her ear, and she can feel his shaft twitch a bit against her back. “Apparently.”

 

 

* * *

So, apparently, there are a _lot_ of things people use dildos for.

Obviously, on the most basic level, it’s a penetration tool, and… It does look like a lot of the people who are using them in those pictures are having a good time. (Granted, Kylo does _not_ understand sucking on them. Rey’s intrigued by that idea, so… Maybe if they ever get one… But… It looks kind of silly to him. He figures that if you have at least one member of the party with a shaft, that should get sucked on, and if no members of the group have a shaft, then, well, he’s just not capable of figuring out what they get out of watching someone suck a plastic one.)

But, in their art books, the picture are… pictures, and…

Well, Rose had mentioned they’ve got channels that just do sex videos, and Jon had mentioned that there were movies where plot and dialog weren’t exactly the point, and… It certainly appears to be a tool that’s designed to _move_ so…

He’s feeling a little flushed, and a little embarrassed, and really good, and kind of naughty, and he can feel a lot of that reflected back at him from Rey. And Kylo’s not sure how much of it is originating from him, and how much of it is her, but…

“We’re grown-ups. Married grown-ups. We’re allowed to do this?”

Rey raises an eyebrow at him as he says that, looking for the sex channels. “Did you intend to ask that as a question?”

“No.” He finds them. “There are fifty-two of them.”

“Apparently, people really like sex. Aren’t there only seven news channels?”

“Yeah.” He almost spends a moment looking at what else they’ve got channels for, but decides that’s the wrong kind of distracted right now. “So…” It feels odd. He’s known for a while these, meaning the entertainment channels, exist, he’s just never… attempted to use them before. But… “Okay, there’s a search feature…” He types in _women with dildos_ (looking at the pictures means he’s got a much better idea of what boys, plural, might do with a dildo, and… he’s not averse to that, he assumes a lot of what was in those pictures must feel good, and he’s somewhat interested in maybe trying some of it, but he’d much rather _watch_ something with women in it.) and a slew of videos turn up.

Kylo’s chin is on her shoulder, and she’s looking at the holovid player. “That’s a lot of results.”

 

 

He’s nodding. Each one’s got a title, a price (none are more than a few credits), a tiny key picture, and a short description. “Jon wasn’t kidding about no plot,” most of the descriptions are just lists of sex acts. “What do you think pegging is?”

Rey shrugs at that. Until ten seconds ago, she didn’t know it was a sex term. “It’s a video with a dildo in it. I’m going to assume it’s got something to do with using one.” She looks at the picture, notices there’s at least one man in this video. “Let’s find out.” She taps the player, and the image of a woman walking down a hallway carrying a satchel of some sort pops up.

 

 

* * *

She gets to the end of the hall, knocks on a door, and a moment later it opens. Kylo would admit he was hoping the person who answered the door would be a woman, but… It’s a guy, and a kind of slight one at that. Not particularly pretty or androgynous, this one is very obviously male, and not attempting to be anything else, but he’s kind of small and lean.

“Hi, I’m Kelly. Your physical therapist. They told me you were having issues with your hamstrings and glutes.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The male is in a bathrobe, and if he’s got a name, it doesn’t seem to matter to the story. Kelly is kneeling on the floor, unpacking her bag, unrolling a long smooth mat, and placing a few… tools… next to it, along with towels and a bottle of oil.

“You’re a dancer?” she asks, looking up at him.

He nods. “Yeah. I pulled my back last year when I wasn’t braced properly for a lift, and ever since my low back, hips, and glutes are just _tight._ ”

“What’s tight?”

He shrugs off the robe, and underneath he’s just wearing a tiny pair of shorts. Lean, yes, but there’s some serious muscle on this man. Kylo can feel Rey’s pleased with this choice, and can see her smile. Meanwhile, Kelly is dressed in some sort of too tight, shiny, neck to toe body glove sort of thing. It covers her, but it’s skin tight and very thin, so the only thing it’s really leaving to the imagination is her coloring and how much body hair she’s got.

Kylo hopes she takes it off at some point, but he can’t for the life of him figure out how she got into it in the first place. If there are fasteners on it, he can’t see them. So, he’s wondering if he’ll get inappropriately distracted by the mechanics of the outfit if she tries to take it off.

The man is standing on one foot, and he lifts the other one, pulling it up, and gets it to a bit past shoulder high. “This. I should be able to get it flush to my ear.”

Both Kylo and Rey stare in amazement at that. Kylo pauses it. “Can you do that?”

“No. You?”

He’s shaking his head.

“Think he’s a Force user?”

“Maybe.”

He unpauses it, and they watch the dancer go through a collection of other stretches. Both Kylo and Rey are fairly flexible. Kylo spent more than a decade practicing the basic Jedi strength and balance poses. He can do a one-handed handstand, without the Force, if he feels like it. But this… The man is up on his toes, on one foot, and has his other leg pulled up behind him, holding it with his hands, saying, “See, my foot should touch my forehead.”

Kylo’s not sure how sexy this is, but he’s starting to feel like he needs to up his flexibility training. After all, he’s hit the point where he stopped doing the Jedi poses because they weren’t challenging, but… This stuff would be challenging.

“Do you think I’m supposed to watch this and think about shifting my workout?”

Rey shakes her head. “I think you’re supposed to be paying attention to muscles and wondering if he’s going to fall out of his shorts.”

Kylo glances down a bit, and notices that, yes, those shorts are really short, and the guy in question does appear to be in danger of slipping out of them.

“This is why I don’t own shorts with a five centimeter leg.”

She kisses him. “Love, you’d have spilled out of those little things just walking around.”

 

 

He feels stupidly pleased by that.

The dancer does a backbend, and Kylo’s nodding, “That, I can do.”

“And likely with the same result.” Because that’s the move where the dancer’s tip slips out of the leg of shorts.

They’re both laughing at this.

“Do you think this is supposed to be funny,” Kylo asks.

“Does it matter? We’re having a good time,” Rey replies, kissing him again.

“Nope.”

The dancer seems to be done showing off. Kelly certainly doesn’t appear to think what he’s been doing is funny. She’s very serious, eyes narrowed and appraising, nodding.

“I think I can help you. I need you to lay face down on the mat, legs apart. I’m going to start with your calves and work my way up.”

“Will it hurt?”

“It might be a little uncomfortable, but if it hurts, let me know, and I’ll use a lighter touch.”

The next bit isn’t funny. And all three of them, Rey, Kylo, and apparently, the Dancer, all really enjoy it. Kelly’s got his calf in her lap, and she’s stroking and kneading it. The Dancer’s making some very pleased sorts of sounds, and she’s saying things like, “You’re storing a lot of tension here, and let me press just a bit harder here, just… yeah, just like that, just take it… there you go, good boy, just keep relaxing under my hands…”

It’s kind of mesmerizing, watching her hands on his skin, the way she’s stroking and stretching and kneading.

“We should really do that again, soon,” Kylo says.

Rey nods. “Yeah. When we take a few days off, we’re going to get that done again.”

Again, Kylo’s not sure if it’s erotic, but he certainly wouldn’t mind being the dancer, laying on the floor having a beautiful woman rub his calves while telling him to just lay there and relax.

He could certainly see doing that, and enjoying it.

As Kelly starts moving up the Dancer’s body, rubbing his thighs and hips and glutes, Kylo’s absolutely certain that this has moved out of the ‘things that might be nice if they were to happen to me’ space and fully into the ‘that’s fucking _hot_ ’ space.

With the way Rey’s squirming in his lap, this seems to be working for her, too.

“Good?” he says to her. He knows it’s good. He can feel it. He wants to hear it, too. He pauses the video.

“Yeah.”

“What do you like about it?” he asks, lips ghosting over her shoulder, raising goosebumps on her skin.

 

 

“Everything. I like imagining being the girl, and running my hands all over him. I like the idea of touching him like that, making him squirm. I like imagining being the dancer, and laying there, getting rubbed on. I like the way his hips are rocking. Trying to get her hands to move higher up. And you know he’s rubbing his shaft against the mat.”

He licks her ear and bites gently on her shoulder. His hands come to rest on her pelvis. He’s just cupping her sex, warming it. “I absolutely do. You do that to me, and I’ll be rubbing off on whatever’s below me, too.”

“I like thinking about what he’s going to look like when he flips over. Is the tip of his shaft going to be poking out of the waistband of his shorts, or is it tucked into the shorts… Will there be a wet spot on the fabric, on his belly…”

“Do you think she’s wet?”

“I would be.”

“What do you think she’s going to do with the dildo?” They haven’t seen it yet. The ‘tools’ she unpacked, a roller, and some sort of pressure point massage tool, and a few… he guesses they’re some sort of pressure point tools, too, though they aren’t quite the same shape as the one she used on the Dancer’s calves. There are three of them, about as long as his finger, in graduated sizes, with a blunt tip and a flared bottom. They look like they’d fit easily in her hand, and she can use them to really dig into the muscles of the dancer’s hips and butt.

She’s used the roller and the first pressure point tool, and the Dancer seemed to really like them, but not the last three.

“I don’t know. He’s got to be quivering under her. I’d just hop on him.”

“That’s certainly how I’d want that massage to end.” He turns the video back on.

“Roll over,” Kelly says, and the Dancer is eager to comply. And yes, he’s hard, and the tip of his shaft is jutting out of the waistband of those ridiculously tiny shorts, and Rey is rocking against Kylo’s hand, but he’s keeping it soft enough that she can’t get much real friction.

“You’re evil,” she says to Kylo.

He grins against her shoulder.

“I’d like us to do some stretching exercises,” Kelly says.

“Okay,” The Dancer’s voice is breathy.

Kelly’s on her knees between his legs, and she’s got his foot on her shoulder, and is leaning into him, forcing his leg up and back. “There… how’s that?”

“It’s good. Still feels kind of tight… Up at the top.”

Rey sniggers. “That’s not your leg that’s tight.”

Kylo chuckles at that, rubbing his shaft against her back. “Very much not his leg.”

“I suspected that,” Kelly says. “Let’s do the other leg, just to make sure.”

They’re both laughing at _suspected._ “You’d have to be blind not to see it,” Rey says.

“She’s being thorough,” Kylo says as Kelly puts the Dancer’s other foot on her shoulder and leans into it. The Dancer moans at the stretch.

“Tight?” Kelly asks.

“So tight. It’s like… a muscle cramp I just can’t reach.”

She’s nodding seriously. “I thought so. Sometimes, tensions deep inside us needs to be released. And that can be difficult without help.”

Kylo laughs at that. “It’s not that deep. Or that difficult. Just give him a hand and…”

“Fortunately for you, I’ve got the right tool for the job.”

“Thank you!” The Dancer is looking grateful at that.

“That said, some men find it… intrusive…”

“Oh come on, just get his shorts off,” Kylo says. “He’s not going to mind if you touch his shaft.”

“I don’t care. I’m a dancer. I have to be able to bend.”

“Okay. How about you take those shorts off, and I’ll get it ready.”

“Finally!” Rey says, grinning, looking forward to what she thinks is going to come next. She’s not entirely sure where the dildo is going to come into play, but maybe the Dancer will spurt, and kind of floppy after won’t be in any shape to “help” Kelly “release her own tensions.”

The Dancer is peeling off those shorts and Kelly’s reaching for the lube and she’s picking up the smallest of the pressure point massagers and lubing it up and…

“Just lay on your back, and pull your legs up. This might be a little uncomfortable easing in, but once it’s in place that tension should melt away,”

“Anything!”

And the Dancer is on his back, with his legs high and that thing, which both Kylo and Rey are rapidly deciding is not a pressure point massager, unless it’s designed for a very specific sort of spot, or… okay, maybe it is… She’s… from the looks of it, gently rubbing it around his anus, and… The Dancer really seems to like it. Apparently, she’s hitting all the right spots for him, because he’s moaning hard.

Kylo’s not moaning, likely because he’s gone perfectly still, watching so intently the _Supremacy_ could be under full attack and he wouldn’t notice. That’s… really… He’s so hard he’s afraid he’s going to pass out. That looks _really_ fucking good.

 

 

Rey’s done that, or something like it, to him before, and he really liked it, and… okay, yeah, he really likes watching it, because he couldn’t really see her do it to him, and… He’s breathing fast, panting almost.

Kylo swallows hard, as Kelly very slowly eases the tool into the Dancer, and he shudders all over at the feel of it. “That’s a good boy. I can see you starting to relax. Here let’s try that stretch again.” Kelly works his legs, and the Dancer keeps moaning.

Rey’s watching Kelly work, and… she can feel the power of that. Of holding the Dancer or Kylo or both, the fantasy slips between them, just in the palm of her hand, controlling their pleasure, making them quiver and moan.

Kylo’s hips are starting to rock, gently, against her back, and she can feel his shaft, feel his enjoyment, too.

Rey wriggles against him. “You really like this, don’t you?”

“Fuck yes!”

“Fuck?”

Kelly’s still working the Dancer, still playing with his legs, stroking his thighs, and… Rey wants that kind of control right now, too.

“Please…” purrs off of Kylo.

She shifts a bit, so she’s no longer between his legs, but over them sliding down his shaft, and he moans loud at it.

He feels so good. Thick and hard, and Rey’s just easing down his body, angling herself so he hits all the spots she likes on the way down.

 

 

Kylo wants to close his eyes and focus on her body on his, but he also doesn’t want to stop watching, and… The Dancer moans, too, loud, and the tool’s inside of him, and Kelly’s holding the base, twisting it, rocking it back and forth saying, “There’s that’s good. This should start to stretch things nice and easy.”

She’s rubbing her hands up and down the insides of his thighs, and the Dancer’s sort of writhing on the mat, his shaft rock hard and jutting against his belly.

“How long has it been since you experienced sexual release?” Kelly asks, as the Dancer continues to try to, subtly, get her hand on his shaft.

“Too long.”

“Ahh…” she says, gently stroking her fingertips down the length of his shaft.

Kylo whimpers at it. The Dancer does, too.

Rey glides up him, hovering a bit, so she’s only, just barely, touching him, before sliding _fast_ back down. Both of them groan at the feel of that.

“Well, that’s likely part of the problem, too. Sometime men need a good draining. Things can get backed up and swollen if you don’t get drained often enough.”

The Dancer’s thrusting up against her fingertips. “And… do you have something for that?”

She grins at him. “Oh, I do. Again, some men find it… invasive…”

“I don’t care, just… please…”

Rey squeezes her delta tight on Kylo, and Kylo whimpers again.

“Oh, sweet boy. I have just what you need. On your hands and knees now, love. I’m going to take good care of you.”

Kylo hasn’t felt like he’s been in any danger of spurting from the sight of something… well… ever. Real danger. Like it might actually happen danger.

Except for now.

She’s kneeling behind the guy, slowly pulling the first tool… maybe that’s the dildo, just a small one, out, and sliding the second, bigger one in. The Dancer is keening as she does it. Face pressed into the mat, hands clenching in front of him. Ass high in the air.

She stares at him in satisfaction, and then bends, pulling one of his stones in her mouth, and one hand on his shaft, and she’s licking up from his stones to… shit… there… He’s still got the… thing… inside of him, but she’s licking all around it, and the Dancer is practically crying he’s so turned on. His shaft and stones are almost purple they’re so hard, and Kylo’s squirming in Rey, wondering if he can spurt just from _seeing_ something, and oh fuck, her tongue is… he bites his lip, hard.

The Dancer is dripping. A long steady flow of clear pre-spurt just easing out of him.

Kelly runs her finger through it, and says, “Yes, it’s clear you need a good draining.”

Then she pulls away, twisting to the side, grabbing a belt and… Okay, that’s definitely a dildo, and Rey quietly says, “I think I know what pegging is,” as she fits the dildo into the belt, and Kylo would nod but he’s afraid if he so much as moves a single muscle he’s going to lose it and spurt right now.

And then Kelly is up on her knees, pulling the tool out of the dancer, and then she grabs his hips, “This might burn a little, but in a minute you’re going to feel so good,” and then she just _slides on in_ deep and steady… and Rey’s right… _that’s_ pegging, and she’s leaning over the guy, pinning his wrists to the bed, and her hips are setting a long, slow, deep pace, and she’s whispering in his ear about how pretty he is, and how sexy, and how good he feels and…

 _“Fuck…_ ” goes sliding out of Kylo’s mouth.

Okay, it’s just physically not possible for Rey to pin him like that. She’d need an extra thirty centimeters at least, but… Oh… That _looks good._

She can feel how he’s watching it, and with a good grip on the base of his shaft, slips off of him. He shudders through that, because that was _almost_ enough friction to tip him over.  “Here… You get into the right position.”

He’s on his knees, face pressed into the bed, arms stretched in front of him, and it’s true, she _absolutely cannot_ pin his wrists with her hands. And, she also can’t, comfortably, get her pelvis up against his ass in that position. His thighs are just too long in comparison to hers.

That said, she can use her Force to pin his wrists, and she can lay her hands on his ass, and it’s not like they’ve got a strap-on dildo, or any sort of dildo, anyway, so… But her fingers work just fine, and she’s very gently starting to ghost them down the cleft of his ass.

“How’s this?”

Kylo exhales long and low, shuddering all through his body.

“And this?” Rey lays a kiss on his right butt cheek, and her lips are moving toward the midline, and…

“Wait…” He blushes. He hasn’t gotten a shower since yesterday night, and, in general, on days like today where the most strenuous thing he did was move datapads from one side of his desk to the other, neither of them care much if he’s gotten one in the last twelve hours, but if she’s going to be licking his ass he wants it _clean_. “I need you to do that to me… really _need_ that… in three minutes,” and then he’s in the refresher before she can even shift her hands.

 

 

* * *

If asked, Kylo will tell you that he does not like the sonic. Mostly because the frequency is _supposed_ to be too high for human (and most humanoid) ears to pick up, but to him it sounds like some sort of small insect being tortured.

That said, there are exactly two situations where he prefers the sonic to soap and water. Both of which are coming into play right now.

The sonic gets you _clean._ It uses high-pitched vibrations and very fast puffs of air to remove dirt, oil, sweat, dead skin cells, whatever. Any and every bit of crud that could be on your skin or in your hair is _gone_ by the time you get out of a sonic. (That’s also part of why he doesn’t like them. He feels sterilized stepping out of one, and most of the time he doesn’t want to feel like a surgical instrument.)

The sonic is _fast._ In the amount of time he could pretty much just get wet and maybe apply the soap to his body, he’s _done_ in the sonic.

And since he wants to be _very_ clean, and do it _very_ fast, right now, it’s _exactly_ the tool for the job.

He’s back in bed before the dents where his knees had been in the mattress have had time to smooth out.

That said, if this feels even half as good as it looked, he is going to ask for it again, but after they’ve played around in the bath, because, really, he prefers soap and water.

 

* * *

_Three minutes._

Rey’s almost about to call him back. Given her position… It’s not like she couldn’t decide for herself if he was clean enough to lick. After all, she had a good view and could absolutely smell him, but…

Three minutes gives her _time._

She _thought_ she knew this man, and his sexual response cycle, inside out and upside down, and all of the wiggly little squarks of it.

Apparently, there are surprises available for both of them.

She knows he likes having his butt played with. She could figure (if she had known what pegging was) that he’d like watching someone else get his butt played with.

These are not surprises.

No, it’s _how_ the therapist was playing with the dancer. It’s Kylo responding to… Praise. The words. He’d thrill through whenever Kelly would call the Dancer baby or love or tell him he was doing so good. She’s never played much with pet names for Kylo. They call each other love, sometimes, but that’s more something he does for her, so she mirrors it back. Plus, calling him by his _name_ is such a thing for him, the idea of coming up with little pet terms for him never really occurred to her.

 _Doing so good. Taking it so well. Look at you, so pretty…_ She likely _should_ have figured that would do good things for him.

Kelly pinned the Dancer. She’s got him down, on the bed, wrists held, and to a degree that leaves Rey cold. Too many… too much… everything. But Kylo… _I need you to do that to me…_

Again, it doesn’t feel like a shocking revelation, or anything she shouldn’t have put together sooner, but she can feel pieces sliding into place.

_Control… That will always be a thing for us.  Nothing ever grabbed me up and took me somewhere good._

Rey’s going to grab him up, and take him somewhere _good._

 

 

* * *

She’s got an amused look on her face when ten seconds later he’s out of the refresher, so clean he doesn’t smell like… anything. She’s not sure if she likes that. Kylo should smell like… well, himself, but…

Later.

“Eager, I take it?” She gently trails the tips of her fingers over his shaft, which didn’t even start to droop he was in and out so fast.

 

 

“I really am.”

She pats the bed. “On your knees, love. Get down for me.”

Then he’s on his knees again, ass high in the air, an all over sort of _please_ just radiating off of him.

 

 

* * *

Every molecule of air in his lungs goes rushing out when Rey takes his shaft in her hand, gently pulls it back, takes his tip in her mouth, giving it a few gentle sucks, and then licks up it, over his stones, behind them, and then _there._

It’s deep and wet and silky and squirmy in all the right ways and it feels a million times better than it looked, and he’s rocking back at her trying to get _everything_ all at once.

She’s got him pinned. Her Force is holding his wrists to the bed. He can’t move his arms, and he probably can move his legs but he doesn’t want to. He’s got to just be there, feel it, and enjoy. There are a lot of things he’s submitted to over the years, but this is the first time someone’s made him _enjoy._

“Oh, look at you, quivering for it!” She kisses from his spine to the tip of his shaft. “I love you wanting me like this.”

He loves this. All he has to do is _exist._ Just be here and absorb love and pleasure. It’s _perfect._

“You’re glowing, Kylo.”

He doesn’t know if he actually is or not, and feels too good to open his eyes and find out.

He probably can’t spurt from this, but right now, that’s fine. Right here, suffused with love and pleasure and… _Force_ her tongue is so wet and so slick and it feels so… He doesn’t have words for that. This is where he wants to be, right here, right now, everything is exactly how it should be.

He’s partially aware of the feel of her Force summoning the massage oil. She pulls back and he pouts a little at that, but he can hear the click of the massage oil bottle opening, and his whole body thrills at that, because he knows what’s coming next. Then there’s the anticipation. His eyes are closed, face pressed to the bed, and he’s just waiting, feeling the heat of her body between his legs, but right now she’s not touching him.

And then she is. With a full body shudder, he relishes her hands, slick with oil, both of them, on his ass, rubbing in warm, firm circles. Then her finger, slick and firm slips into him, and it does burn, but it’s a burn that settles into his shaft, making everything harder and more sensitive, and he wants to fist himself, but she’s got his hands pinned.

“I’ve got you, Kylo. I’ll make you feel so, so good.”

He already does. So good. Too good.

 

 

“Force, you’re beautiful like this, all golden and flushed and hot for me.”

He whimpers. _Beautiful_ spiked his desire, made electric pleasure arc through him.

“That’s it, pretty love, that’s it… Just hold out a little more. Let me watch you like this, gorgeous.” Her finger is stroking in small, sure circles inside of him, and he knows she can feel how much he’s loving this, and her, and how she’s making him feel right now. “You’re doing so good, love. So good.”

He takes a moment to just breathe. Riding the feel of her in and on him, and breathing through the pleasure and pulse of her touching that little spot inside of him.

“Ahhhh… Look at you, so hard and eager…” Her other hand is just ghosting along his shaft. Gliding on the drop of slick at his tip. “So wet… Do you want me to lick it?”

His face is pressed to the bed, otherwise he’d be in danger of giving himself whiplash he’d be nodding so hard.

He feels her finger twist inside of him as she shifts position, slipping below him, between his legs, and then her mouth is on the tip of his shaft, her tongue stroking over the underside, and he’s _right_ on the edge, feeling the floor peeling away from under him a hair at a time.

He doesn’t have to say it, his stones are in her hand, and her mind is in his body, she can feel him both as a matter of her physical body on his, and her mind in his… She uses her mind to talk to him, _That’s it, love, feel it. So hot and hard and_ ready _for me. Ride it, beautiful, don’t fall over yet, just_ feel _it._

Force! He is. He’s _right_ there, all through his body. Usually, here, a hair’s breadth away, his body is focused down to his shaft and stones, but right now… Right now he’s focused on them, yes, but… It’s not _just_ them. This one… it’s his low belly, and ass, and thighs, and everything’s just, almost, _there._

His jaw is clenched, and his hips are rolling, slowly, he’s pulling this moment just that much further out. He knows if he were to thrust, hard and fast, he’d be done in a stroke, two at most. So this is just a long, slow roll, pulling that much more friction out of the slide of her mouth against him.

She’s sucking and pressing in tandem, getting that spot that makes him feel the twitch and pulse of his spurt, without tipping over the edge. _There you go, sweet boy. I can taste you on my tongue. Delicious. Up love, on your knees. Want you deep in me when you spurt._

He scrambles up, and wobbles for a moment before she helps him get stable. Then he’s kneeling, and she’s in front of him. _Hand in my hair, love._

Hands, right, he’s got hands. His left one cradles the back of her head, fingers twining in her hair, as he guides her toward him, keeping his stroke shallow, no matter how much he wants to plunge.

 

 

_Mmmm… Deeper, sweet love. You can go deeper._

That just tingles through him, along with the sight of it. Looking down at her, her lips wrapped around his shaft as it vanishes between her lips.

With permission he snaps his hips forward, shaft deep in her mouth, and as he does, she follows with her fingers, thrusting into him as he does to her, and one… two… her mouth on him, wet and suck, fingers inside, press and thrust and on two he’s gone, twitching and moaning, body vibrating with his release.

He wants to watch, to see her swallow him down, but his vision goes white, and the room fritzes out, and for a moment there’s just the _feel_ of it.

Then he’s back, in his body, mind, and room. His vision is back online, and he watches her twitch as he’s coming down, panting, tingling all over at it.

She looks up at him, grinning, and then pulls back a bit, wiping some of his spurt off of her lips, licking it off her fingers.

His eyes close and he shudders through that. Then he feels like he weighs a million kilos, and every muscle in his body has worked long and hard. Kylo flops back on the bed.

Rey snuggles in close to him, and for a moment they both breathe.

 

 

Finally, he says, “You’re good, too, right?”

He feels her nod, and the amusement in her mind as she says, “You think I didn’t ride along on your good time? That was…”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah.”

He feels loose and calm and light and so, so good.

“So, we going to get one of them?” Rey asks.

He nestles in close to her. “Yeah. I loved you doing that to me.” He’s petting her hair before he thinks to ask, “Did you like doing it?”

He knows she rode his release, so she liked feeling it through him, but that’s not what he’s asking.

“Oh yeah. It’s… A kick, seeing you like that. All spread out and begging for it. I’ll happily do that again.”

“Good. I really liked that. You… taking care of me like that.” And again, she knows that he likes their regular sex too, but this is a different sort of taking care of him.

Rey raises up on her elbow. “I’ll always take care of you…” Now that she’s not going at it hot, pet names aren’t just tripping off her lips.

He’s looking at her curiously. He can feel she’s looking for something.

“Darling?” Rey shakes her head at that. It doesn’t feel right. “I’ll find something.”

“Something?” He’s blinking, too sleepy and blissed out to really follow what she’s thinking.

“You like the pet names. I’ll find one for you.”

He grins at her, and pets her face. “Anything… Anything from your lips makes me happy.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay... I might have had a tad too much fun illustrating that one, but... I regret nothing! ;)
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed it, too.


	13. The Best Night

1/29/2

 

The days when Chewie and Finn come back from their adventures are always _the best days._ At least, that’s the consensus among the kids at Lirium. (And Rose.)

And this time is no different.

But there are _best days_ filled with new stories and new hardware for the settlement.

And then there are _best days_ filled with new stories _and_ new foods for the communal kitchens.

And today is a _best day_ where box after box after box of _fresh_ produce and new goodies are being unloaded from the _Falcon._

“Where were you?” Rey asks, wind trying to steal her voice away. They’ve got to get this loaded and moved fast, or all of those lovely crates of yummy fruit and veg are going to be _frozen_.

Finn nods to the Faviers, all of whom are hitched up to sleds. “Hilthor III. It’s harvest time, and they’re low on bacta, so we stocked up and made a killing. There’s at least a month of hay for the critters, and a _lot_ of goodies for us, too.”

“Why were they low on bacta?” Critt asks, putting one of the boxes on another sled.

“They only had one factory that made the stuff, and it burned down. We got there with a ship full of it, they took every drop we could find, asked for more, so we grabbed more, and then one more run, and… well, we’ve got more food than we know what to do with now,” Finn replies

“Small place?” Jacen asks.

“About twenty-five thousand Hilts scattered over fifty square kilometers. They’ve got the start of a decent town going, but they’re mostly still farming,” Finn says with a sniff, while handing over a crate of strawberries.

 _Which is good for us,_ Chewie growls, a cage of very unsettled… somethings… _Rabbits_ he says, apparently able to tell that Rey and Jacen don’t know what those soft, fluffy things in the cage are.

Torine, back for another load of goods to take to the kitchen looks at the rabbits and blanches. “Don’t tell me we’re going to eat them! We can’t eat them! They’re too cute.”

The adults glance at each other, as Chewie puts the cage on the sled with the hay for the Faviers on it. Finn’s the one who rescues them. “They’re fiber animals. That long fur can make yarn. Go on, into the _Falcon,_ grab another box.”

“Fiber animals? You mean stew animals, right?” Jacen says, voice low.

“That, too. They do make yarn out of them, also. That’s why we got them.”

Chewie growls, quietly for him, _Figured you could use animals that breed fast, don’t eat too much, give you something warm to wrap around yourselves, and then a good meal when they get old._

Rey nods at that. She also makes a mental note to make sure Kylo _never_ sees one, or rabbit will no longer be on the menu for them, either. Like Torine, he has a difficult time eating things he can empathize with, and these sweet, little balls of fluff have empathy written all over them.

“Sounds perfect,” Jacen adds. “So, you gonna let me come along on the next one of these trips?”

Chewie and Finn both glance at each other, and then at Jacen, and back to each other. A third set of hands who can fly the _Falcon_ and sweet talk anyone who gets in the range of his voice wouldn’t be a bad addition to their crew.

 _We’ll talk about it,_ Chewie replies.

 

 

* * *

Five minutes later, when Jacen’s in charge of getting the sled with another load of fruit and veg on it heading to the kitchen, Chewie asks Rey, _Can Jacen come with us?_

Rey shrugs. “I don’t see why not. I mean, if you want him to.” She sees the way Chewie’s looking at her. It’s clear that he thinks it’s her job to have an opinion about things like this. She rolls her lips. “I don’t know. I’m not his mother, and he’s old enough to decide this sort of thing for himself. Right?”

Chewie sort of shrugs. It’s clear that he’s dubious as to the ability of seventeen-year-old human males deciding much of anything for themselves.

“I was on my own at his age.”

Chewie nods. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s clear that he’s thinking about how orphans don’t necessarily make great parents.

“He is a pilot in training, so… If you’re willing to put him in the Falcon. It’s probably good for him to keep learning how to fly different ships.”

_We can always use more pilots._

“So. Yeah… I’m okay with him going. Just make sure he behaves and learns something useful on the trip. He’s still a kid, sort of, right?”

Chewie pats her shoulder. _You’ll get better at this. When we figure out what the next run is, I’ll let him know and see if he wants to come along. Hopefully won’t be a long one the way this one was._

“Yeah, what happened with this? Weren’t you supposed to be gone for eight days?”

_We were, but Finn wasn’t kidding about every drop we could bring. We scraped the bacta supplies of three different settlements before we ran out of sources. They gave us exactly as much cargo as we could carry, and fifty thousand credits on top of that. If we could have found more on the cheap, they would have taken it. You don’t notice how important bacta is until you’ve got to ration the stuff._

Rey would have to imagine that’s true. Given how often she’s helping to take care of small cuts and bumps and burns and whatnot. If they didn’t have any sort of Force healing here, they’d likely be swimming in the stuff.

Chewie looks over her shoulder. The kids are back with the sleds, time to load up more food.

Then to the kitchen, cooking, eating, party time!

 

 

* * *

“You okay?” Critt asks Finn after he turns his head from the food and coughs. Again. They’re next to each other, in the communal kitchen, sharing the counter, cutting up plums to pickle.

They’re small, the size of Finn’s last thumb joint, delicate, almost translucent purple tinged green. More sour than anything Rey thinks of as a _plum,_ but she’s been told they make awesome sweet pickles, so that’s what they’re doing with them.

 _Jade plums._ Chewie had said when the kids were all drawn to them.

“Yeah,” Finn grabs a plum, popping it in his mouth, grinning around it. Right now the whole settlement, minus Rose, who is getting Paige down for the night (and will be joining them soon),  Poe (currently off doing whatever it is he does when he's not here) and Kylo, who isn’t home, yet (and Rey hopes he’ll join them), are in the kitchen, gorging themselves on the fresh fruit and veg. It’ll only be fresh for so long, so they’re eating their fill as they clean, chop, and sort everything for freezing, pickling, or turning into jams and jellies.

The kitchen smells excellent, and it’s warm. Everyone is in there, all of the cookers are going, heating brines and simmering berries into compotes and jams, so for once, it’s warm enough for everyone to be in shirt sleeves and trousers. But Finn’s sweating. “Throat hurts a little,” he says, feeling a bit of a tickle behind the roof of his mouth.

Rey catches that, and looks across the room at him. “Is that normal?”

He glares a little and then rolls his eyes. “Actually, yes. Every time we go to one of those farming communities, the ones with… Chewie, what do they call those things?”

Chewie howls.

“With them. They’re like the Faviers, but smaller, with hooves and pointy ears that stick up. Anyway, I get within a klick of them, and my nose starts to run and throat hurts. I’ve been coughing and sniffling since we got to Hiltnor. Should be done in a day or two, though.”

“Allergies,” Kven says, nodding. “Before I moved here, I used to get them every fall. They’ve got shots for them.”

“I’ll ask MX-6 about it the morning.” Because he’d really rather not end up feeling like his head is a leaky faucet every time they run into a settlement with horses.

 

 

* * *

 _Rey?_ Kylo’s got supper, and is looking forward to eating it with his wife, but right now he’s sitting in an empty cottage. A _cold_ empty cottage. He pokes the heater. It’s on full blast, which means… He checks the thermometer, and outside is _cold._ Winter with a vengeance, indeed.

_Communal kitchen. Come join the party. We could use someone who’s handy with veggies and a knife._

He bites his lip, thinking. _Everyone there?_

 _Poe’s off planet. Rose is getting Paige down for the night, otherwise, yeah. Finn and Chewie are back with a_ lot _of fresh produce. We’re taking care of it. Jams, jellies, pickles, chopping things up for freezing. Xanth’s got some music going. We’re telling stories. It’s a party._

He smiles a little at that, and she hits him with his mental image from more than a year ago of being able to join story time and be part of the gathering.

_So, come on._

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, decides that… well, if being in the same room with Chewie is a problem, he can leave. Then he strips out of his blacks, slips into Padme… Well, Ren now. The difference a few months makes, apparently. No matter what he’s wearing, he’s Ren, now. Kylo tucks dinner into their cooler, and grabs the two knives out of the block that he particularly likes. Then he bundles up.

It’s _cold_ outside.

 

 

* * *

He pauses at the door. He’s never actually been in the communal kitchen before. He knows it’s there. He knows a lot of the kids don’t see much purpose to using up space in their cottages for food storage, and prefer to eat together in here.

Plus, it’s easier to rest knowing the little guys don’t have a cooker in their places. Just that much less of a chance of someone or thing getting burned.

He knows that Poe also likes this set up. His ship doesn’t have much of a galley, so this space is for him, too. And… for all he knows the Ticos might not have a kitchen in their cottage. Maybe they turned that space into a nursery for Paige, or… Actually, no, they slapped an extra room on top of their cottage. That’s got to be the nursery.

Anyway… He’s dithering. And shivering. The wind’s cutting right through his cowl.

 _Come in,_ Rey thinks to him, so he does.

It’s, especially compared to outside, bright and hot and loud. There’s at least twenty-five people shoved in there, ranging in age from five or six (Sometimes Rugh will say she’s five, sometimes six. MX-6's, the med droid, best guess, based on her teeth, is five and a half) to Chewie’s 248.

Chewie.

He’s just staring at Kylo; who’s staring back. Every Force sensitive in the room can feel the tension crackling off of them. There’s a lot of anger pouring off of Chewie, and Kylo can feel his defenses rising at it, along with a deep, heartsick shame. And sorrow, so much sorrow, that’s wavering around Kylo like the black cloak wrapped around his shoulders. Grief, loss, regret…rage… It’s pouring off of Chewie, a silent howl of loss undulled by time.

The Order kids, Jacen lead among them, are projecting a wave of protective feelings toward Kylo. He blinks, that’s… new. But that also means they’re starting to look at Chewie differently, because the wave of anger and pain from him is just overwhelming, and they don’t know _why_ Chewie so clearly, vibrantly, passionately _loathes_ Kylo. Why him just being in the room makes Chewie flare sparking red.

Rey’s stepped over to him. “Hey, come in,” pulling him gently deeper into the room. Chewie turns away from him, and goes back to chopping up olmelts.

 _You’re okay._ Rey’s thinking to Kylo.

_Maybe._

Jacen shouts out, “Turn this up; I like this song,” and that gets the kids talking again. Then he sees Kylo take his cloak off, hanging it next to the other ones, and the knives he’s got tucked into his belt.

“You’ve got your own knives?” Magiit asks.

“He’s a tool snob,” Rey says.

Kylo pulls a cutting board toward him, standing next to Rey, and scoops some of the peaches from her board to his. He really sees what fruit she’s got and feels her giggling in his mind. _Yeah, I saved some. Might play with them later._

He doesn’t blush. Intentionally. At least, not so anyone else can see. The tips of his ears feel hot. _It’s not like it was a preference or anything. Just… what was available._

 _Uh huh… And what if I want to nibble one off of you?_ She lifts one of the pieces from her board, gives it a little lick, and then sucks on it before popping it in her mouth to eat it.

His eyes light up at that and an entirely different warmth spreads through his body. _I can likely go along with that._

 _You know I can hear this, right?_ Jacen thinks at them. _Probably about three of the other kids, too._

Rey whimpers. Kylo blushes, completely uncontrolled, now. Everyone near them is staring, feeling _something_ is up.

Jacen winks at them. _Nah. Just fooling with you. You two are pretty good at keeping your thoughts down. That said, if you’re gonna think naughty at each other, keep your expressions under control. It’s_ really _easy to see the bedroom eyes._

Kylo sighs, stabs the peach in front of him, splitting it through the pit, while holding hot eye contact with Jacen, and thinks at Rey, _I wanted to do this why?_

She leans over, up on her tip toes, and kisses him. “Because it’s fun.”

 

 

* * *

And really, a few minutes into it, it is.

Kylo doesn’t often fondly remember anything about learning to be a Jedi, but sometimes kitchen duty was pleasant. Working together with other people you… well, in his case tolerated, in a companionable sort of way is nice.

And, Finn can really tell stories. He’s _great_ at it, and apparently they had a good time on this latest trip. Listening to him, and yes, he does have to stop to cough a little now and again, apparently those _things_ he’s allergic to set him off for a few days, is entertaining, and Chewie keeps breaking into the story with his own bits and pieces.

And it’s just _nice._

Rose joins them once she’s got Paige down. She’s sharing Finn’s cutting space now. And they’re working companionably next to each other. He’s peeling, she’s slicing, nibbling choice bits from each other’s fingers, and both of them are radiating a gently content glow just being together.

She’s got some stories of doing this with her family. They were miners, not farmers, but they, and everyone in their mine, had a small garden for fresh produce, and harvest time was always a party.

And Kylo, as she’s talking about bringing in the olmelts and swecklers and pumpkins and musk melons, decides to add a bit of his own past to it.

“Harvest time was year round where I was. We didn’t have winter… At least not like we do here. It’d get cool. Deepest winter might mean a day or two of frost, and maybe a night of freezing rain, but nothing like here. We had snow, once, in fifteen years. Once the days got short, we’d switch from warm crops, fruits, berries, to cool ones, potatoes, cabbages, rye, Rose’s olmelts.”

Rose is looking across the table at him, curious, “You used to farm?”

“Luke was a farmer first, Jedi next, so his temple… monastery… whatever, was a farm. We had crops going year round.”

Chewie adds a bit, _Took us three years to find a planet with the right climate for that. He wanted a place that wasn’t too wet or dry. Not going back to Tatooine or Dagobah. It couldn’t get too hot or too cold, and it couldn’t have too many people on it._

“Best I knew, we were the only people on it,” Kylo says.

_Lando took care of that. He bought it for Luke. There were three small settlements there when we found it. He made it worth their while to go elsewhere._

Kylo hadn’t known that.

_Took him four more years to get it set up after that. Clearing out a place. Building it up. He had some of the same domes we’ve got here._

Kylo nods. “Yeah. Our gym. One of the meditation spaces.”

“Did Luke set up his monastery on his own?” Savarah asks.

 _R2 was there,_ Chewie says.

“But you weren’t?” Xanth asks Kylo.

Kylo shakes his head. “If it took him three years to find the place, that means I was two when he got there. They didn’t take me there until I was eight.”

“Were you the first student?” Cassie asks.

“Second. He found M’Gll before I got there. Second of the New Jedi.” He looks to Rey. “Second Maji.” He goes back to chopping more peaches. He and Rey have finished the blush ones and moved onto the white ones. “They had a peach orchard?” he asks Finn.

Finn doesn’t say anything until Rose gives him a bit of a kick under the table. “Yeah. Peaches, plums, apricots, pluots. Almonds. Lots of them, but we don’t need to do anything with them, so they’re already stored.”

“And berries,” Elias says. He’s been taking kilo after kilo of berries, and gently heating them on the stove with lots of sugar. “We’re going to have jam until the end of time.”

“Good. Plain toast is boring,” Opal says.  

“So’s plain porridge,” Kylo says.

Chewie howls. _Luke was the only person I ever met who preferred his plain. Not even any butter or salt. Just naked, mushy oats and wheat._

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. “He liked jam and sugar, or salt and butter on his just fine. Probably better than just fine. But if he liked it, then he’d want it, and wanting was on the direct route to the Dark Side path. And no one who isn’t starving, especially not Jedi Master Luke, ever _wanted_ plain porridge.”

Ostrae, who’s overseeing very carefully straining the seeds out of the raspberry puree she’s making for jam for her cookies, looks at Kylo and says, “Jedi weren’t allowed to have yummy food?”

He shrugs a bit. “We cooked for ourselves, and none of us had your touch with it. But, in general we weren’t supposed to want things, and it’s easy to want yummy things, so food was plain and nutritious. We did cookies because we were able to talk him into the idea that physical training days were hard, so we needed something with a lot of fat and sugar to keep our energy up. He might have just wanted a good excuse for cookies, too.

“When things got ripe, we could just pick them and eat them.” He takes a slice of peach and pops it in his mouth. “This is good, but there’s something to be said for eating it the second it’s ready, right under the tree it grew on.

“We didn’t let food go to waste, so anything that didn’t get eaten when it was fresh was put away, preserves, frozen, dried. Luke kept trying to get fruit to dry properly, like it did on Tatooine, but it was too humid for that. Even the Jedi Master couldn’t make good fruit leathers in 70% humidity.”

“So there was jam for your porridge?” Kven asks Kylo, voice quiet, feeling shy at speaking directly to him.

“There was, but… Luke ate his plain. And it’s not like he’d look down on you or say anything if you put jam or butter or salt on your porridge. You didn’t _have_ to eat yours plain. It wasn’t a rule or anything like that. Especially when kids were first with us. New place, new rules, new everything, no family or friends around. Luke didn’t want us to feel like we were being punished, and a diet of plain everything certainly feels like punishment. But he was the one who ‘knew how to do it right.’ And he was the one telling us about the dangers of pleasure and wanting and attachment. And, especially as kids… eating is a big sort of wanting and pleasure.

“So, M’Gll, she’s the one who got there before I did, ate hers plain. And would drink room temperature water with it. And she’d be just fine. Never giving so much as a hint of anything less than perfect, smug satisfaction at that. The only thing M’Gll ever wanted was to be the perfect Jedi, and at least from where I was sitting, she was well on her way to it.

“I’m his nephew, and Leia Organa’s son, so I’m supposed to just ooze perfect Jedi-ness out of every pore, and…” He takes another bite of peach. “I want things. I _like_ wanting things. And plain porridge and lukewarm water is fu—awfully gross, okay?” The teens snigger at that catch. “You have too many meals of that, and you stop wanting things, all right. You stop wanting everything and get really listless, which I _loathe._ But, again, I’m supposed to have been a super-Jedi since birth, so I’m not supposed to want anything, and I hate it. And, of course, Jedi aren’t supposed to hate anything, either. I always felt like everyone was staring when I’d even put salt on my food, or add some jam to my breakfast toast, or… Whatever. They probably weren’t. A lot of it was likely in my head.” He shrugs. Most of these kids likely don’t need to know about him and Snoke, not yet. “But it always felt that way.” He glances to Chewie, able to feel him really listening to him. “Most of the time I felt like every step I took, and every move I made there was wrong.” He taps the Maji pendant on his throat. “I felt like that about almost everything I did before I put this on.”

Chewie just looks at him. Kylo can’t read the expression, but he can feel the emotions aimed at him are more sad than angry.

That’s probably good enough.

For now.

 

 

* * *

The kitchen is the warmest bit of the entire settlement by the end of the night.

It’s really _nice_ in there.

Nice in a you-could-toss-off-all-of-your-clothing-and-cavort-about-naked-without-having-to-keep-yourself-swaddled-from-head-to-toe-in-blankets sort of way.

This is relevant, because, as the fruits and veg have been dealt with, and the tools put away, and the children have headed back to their cottages, Kylo and Rey _and_ Finn and Rose are lingering, cleaning more and more slowly, looking to take advantage of the very nice and warm galley, and the privacy that would come from being the last ones in there.

If, say, they _just happened_ to be the last ones in there.

Rey and Rose are talking with each other, keeping up conversation about what they hope to get done soon, namely snow breaks, because they’ve spent more than enough time shoveling snow out of the street, and… well, they’ve hit the point where they just don’t have much room for it. It’s a meter high in most places now, and then bits they’ve shoveled over and over are two meters high, or higher now, and…

Something’s got to get keep some of the snow out of the town, and Rose has been researching snow breaks.

But, really, there’s only so much to say about snow breaks, and there’s only so much cleaning to do in the kitchen, and there’s only so slowly you can do it, and… Well, when you’ve wiped up the same bit of counter for the third time, it becomes really obvious that you’re intentionally _not_ leaving.

Finally Rose just says it. “Look, you two have an entire other ship that’s not freezing, so off you go, and let us enjoy here.”

 

 

Rey breaks out in giggles as both of the men look scandalized and refuse to even get in the neighborhood of meeting each other’s eyes. She grabs a few peaches, and Kylo’s knives before saying, “Come on,” and porting him back to his room on the _Supremacy._

Once they’re there, Kylo flops onto their bed, saying, “Remind me to never eat in there.”

She laughs at that. “I’m sorry, did I misunderstand what _you_ were hoping to do in there?”

“No, but if _I’d_ done it, then I wouldn’t need the reminder.”

Rey laughs at that, and sits next to him, pulling off her jacket. The peaches are lying on the bed next to them. She glances at them, and him, and back to them, a very amused and sexy smile on her face, “So…”

He sighs a bit. “You really want to see this?”

The grin on her face isn’t on any level obscure.

Kylo glances at them. He can remember being fifteen, and just so, so, so _randy_ all the fucking time, and so bored of his hands, and just _desperate_ for _anything_ new. And they were new. Soft, ripe, juicy, sun warm… But… right now, they’re just a few orbs of fairly tasty vegetable matter and not even close to triggering any interest on his part. “They’re a hell of a lot less interesting now that you’re in my world.”

She laughs. “I’d really hope so.” She settles herself in his lap, and kisses him gently. She got the sense of his last few thoughts. “If it’s not fun, they can just be part of breakfast.”

He shrugs a little. “They could be fun, and maybe one day they will, but… right now, thinking about them and sex just makes me feel desperate in a way I don’t like.”

She kisses him. “Then they’ll be breakfast.”

He kisses her, long and slow, feeling his body rise against hers. His hand comes to her breast, cupping it, feeling the soft, supple weight against his palm.

He kisses it, through her shirt. “This. You, soft and warm. A pretty handful against my lips. This is what I want.” He kisses again, feeling her nipple perk through the fabric of her shirt. He glances back to the peach. “That was just killing time until you came along.”

Rey squirms invitingly, and then pulls her shirt over her head. His lips follow the path of naked skin from her throat to her breast. His thumb traces over her nipple, and he admires the tanned flush of her skin. “It’s been months since we’ve seen a warm day. Longer since we were playing in the sun on Lirium, but the sun’s still in your skin.” He nuzzles against her curves. “I love this.”

She strokes his hair, fingers trailing down his neck, dipping under the collar of his shirt, tracing along the line of his shoulder. She tugs his head up, looking him in the eyes. “And the stars in yours.”

Their lips meet again, and again, as they wriggle each other out of their clothing, as hands follow a familiar dance.  

It’s not long before he’s deep in her body, and she’s deep in his mind, and both of them are rocking, slick and eager, against each other.

And not long after that, they’re curled together, under the deep blankets of their bed at Lirium, breathing in unison, chasing slumber.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey All,
> 
> Okay, so I'm a firm believer in the idea of stick chapter breaks where the current chunk of plot action ends. I do not generally like just sticking chapter breaks in because you've hit a certain word count or what have you.
> 
> Yeah...
> 
> Great...
> 
> Okay, so, this is the last, clear breaking point for something in the neighborhood of 150 pages of story, and, even there, this probably feels like the start of the setup to something, because it is. So yeah, I like long chapters, but I'm not dumping a 200 page chapter on you. I'm just not. (Not the least of which is because I'm also not entirely done with the last chunk of it.)
> 
> So, if the next few chapter breaks feel a little "Huh? Here?" just bear with me, I'm chopping them up as best I can with what I've got.
> 
> Okay, so, happy reading and see you next week. :)


	14. All The Problems In the Galaxy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got a long one today. Grab a cuppa and settle in, you're about to see what I meant last week with, "I don't feel like there's a good stopping point coming up."

 

1/30/2

 

Rey wakes up a lot earlier than she’d like to.

Knocking, on the door, and… She’s up, pulling on her robe. If someone’s at her door this early, something’s wrong.

She’s half-turned to Kylo to tell him to go back to sleep, but… oh… okay. He slept through the knocking. She decides it’s a good thing that he’s comfortable enough here to sleep through someone coming to their door in the middle of the night.

She opens it, and Rose is standing in front of her. “Rey… Can you, come over?”

Rey blinks. “Uh… Sure, what’s up?” She waves Rose in, heading to her room. If Rose is here, this isn’t the sort of thing she can do in her bathrobe. “Hold up.” A moment later, she’s out of their room, dressed, ready for whatever it is Rose is here for.

“It’s not allergies. Finn’s sick. Like… throwing up and high fever and… sick.”

“Oh.” Rey winces. Of all the things you don’t want. “What did MX-6 say?” One of the great things about a med-droid in a settlement this small, is that if you comm him, he’ll come to you. One of the bad things, is that if MX-6 has made his visit, and Rose is here, it means there’s not much MX-6 can do.

“Hiffa virus. Anti-viral resistant Hiffa virus. And apparently it’s stupidly contagious, spread by breathing in cough droplets,” Rey winces, harder. A lot harder this time. “so… In the next twelve to twenty-four hours, we’re pretty much all going to have it, so…” Rose muffles her mouth in her sleeve as she coughs.

“So, you want to see if I can help?”

“Yeah. That’s MX’s best guess for keeping this from running wild. All he can offer is to make us a bit more comfortable while we go through it.”

“Okay, you call Poe?”

“Yeah. I told him not to come home for the next ten days, unless he wants to do it in anti-haz garb.”

“It lasts for ten days?” Rey groans. Ten days of everyone sick is _not_ anything she’s looking forward to.

“Yeah. Finn’s volunteering to be your test subject. See if there’s anything you can do to curb it or speed it up or…”

“Great.” She rubs her forehead. There’s got to be something she can do, but nothing is immediately springing to mind. Then she notices that Rose is sweating. “You’re sick, too.”

Rose nods, and then rolls her eyes. Her husband just got back from a _long_ trip. “Yeah. I did a tad more than just breathe the droplets, you know?”

Rey nods. “Is Paige sick?”

“She’s not fussing, and since MX said it’s caught by breathing in the droplets, neither Finn and I have wanted to go into her room.”

“That makes sense. Okay. I think the first thing we’re going to do is see if we can keep Paige from getting this.”

Rose slumps a bit in relief. “That would be good.”

 

 

* * *

Rose and Finn’s home looks the way it always does.

Well, except for MX-6, the med-droid, standing in the living room. He’s humanoid, light silver, with glowing blue eyes, and, in a galaxy of many, many races, he’d be easy to mistake for some sort of organic creature.

 

 

Apparently, when it comes to medical care, a lot of organics like things that also look and feel like organics.

So MX-6, save for the glowing eyes, the never changing expression, and the silvery skin, does. (Apparently, organics also like to be able to identify non-organics at a glance, which is why MX-6 is silver with glowing eyes, instead of human colored.)

Finn and Roes’s home absolutely doesn’t smell the same.

Usually, Rose’s home smells like spice, tea, and whatever’s been simmering away in the cooker on low, getting ready for dinner. Today it smells like… Rey actually doesn’t know. She’s never run into something her nose less wanted to experience than this. It’s the single worst thing she’s ever smelled, and as an ex-scavenger, she’s run into some mind-bogglingly unpleasant substances in the past.

She chokes a bit heading in, and MX-6 says to her, “Hiffa virus is known for that smell. There are many viruses that cause intestinal distress, but that particular smell is the calling card of Hiffa.”

“Wonderful. What is Hiffa?” Rey asks, figuring the more she knows, the better the chance she can do something about it.

“It’s a viral infection that starts in the lungs, multiplying and spreading through cough droplets. In the first stage, it appears to be a mild sore throat and cough, worsening to sweating and fever. That will last for twelve to thirty-six hours. Then it settles in the intestinal tract, resulting in a high fever, and the body evacuating everything.”

“Is it fatal?” Rey asks, noticing Rose going straight into her bedroom to lie down.

“Only in settlements where IV liquids and calories aren’t available. Dehydration and malnutrition are the primary killers in people with Hiffa. If you can keep the patient well-hydrated and fed, they’ll survive.”

“And you can’t make it go away.”

“If it was standard Hiffa, I could, but it’s a long-lasting virus, staying active in a person’s system usually for three or four days after all symptoms have passed. For an anti-viral to work, people have to take it long after they’re feeling better. Most of them don’t. Which means that an anti-viral resistant strain has popped up, and that’s the one you all have now.”

“Wonderful.”

MX-6 cocks his head. “Well, on the upside, in a week and a half, you’ll all be immune to Hiffa.”

“Lovely.”

“Indeed.” MX-6’s blue light eyes glow at Rey as he says, “Do you think there’s anything you can do?”

“That’s the questions now, isn’t it?”

 

 

* * *

It’s not difficult to find Finn. Between the smell, and the retching noise, and the fact that like every other cottage on this planet, they’ve got one refresher, there was only one place he was going to be.

Rey knocks on the door, and quietly says, “Can I come in?”

There’s a groan from the far side, and she takes that as a yes, and enters.

The smell was bad _outside_ of the door. It’s staggering inside. Finn’s mostly naked, he's still got his sleep shirt on, curled on his side next to the toilet, smeared with some greenish brown stuff Rey would rather not contemplate, and she’s sure Finn would have preferred it not have come out of his body.

But, today’s not the day for getting what they wish for.

“Hey,” she says softly.

He tilts his head in her direction. Waves of hurt and sad and awful are just pouring off of him.

“I’m sorry,” comes out of his mouth. “We were out longer than we thought we’d be, so I made sure we rushed right home. Cut a day and a half off the trip. If we hadn’t rushed home, this would have hit me on the _Falcon_ and…” And whatever comes after that doesn’t have a chance to get out of Finn’s mouth because he’s on his knees, throwing up again.

Rey kneels beside him, and rests her hands on his back. He’s scalding hot to the touch, skin slick with sweat, and shivering as he retches. When she focuses on Finn, she can feel the virus. It’s a stretchy dark muck flowing through his body. Tendrils of it weaving through every system of his body, the bulk of it lining his innards. Apparently, his body knows what it’s doing. Most of the muck is in his guts, so it’s emptying those guts out.

Getting a feel for it, she can see how it’ll go, spreading along. It’s tenacious, creeping into any system it can get a toehold in, and breeding fast. She can feel Finn’s system trying to fight it. Trying to purge it. His light is on fire, burning it out. It’s breeding faster than he’s killing it, right now. But every load of it he gets out of his body, is more he doesn’t have to kill, and it’s not killing Finn’s fire, so eventually, he’ll beat this into submission on his own.

It’s just not going to be even remotely fun.

The problem is, she doesn’t, just by feeling, really have any sort of plan for what she can do to help this.

Other than lay her hands on Finn, and just wash him in a general sense of calm.

Judging by the way he’s groaning and still throwing up, it probably doesn’t help.

 

 

* * *

From there she checks Rose. It’s there. Not as much, but it’s there. She’s in bed, on her side, curled into a tight ball, shivering. Her fever is coming up, but, at least now, it hasn’t spread into her intestinal track.

And that’s where the start of a plan begins. Maybe, if Rey can head this off…

Maybe.

 

 

* * *

From there she sprints up to Paige’s room.

It is true that when Finn gets home, he does want to see his girls.

It’s also true that when Finn gets home, he wants time with his _wife. Alone time_ with his wife. So, it wasn’t exactly an accident that he got home a few minutes _after_ Paige went down for her long afternoon nap.

And when Paige got up from her nap, she got to have some quality time with Daddy and Mommy in the kitchens, eating supper, playing, and ‘helping out’ with food prep. (Mostly by gumming a few tiny bites of plum and apricot.)

And then Mommy put her down to bed, where she was in their home, on her own (Yes, there’s a comm that Rose keeps on herself so she can hear what’s going on in Paige’s room) _not_ breathing in the hazmat that was issuing from Finn’s lungs.

So, unlike everyone else on Lirium, who spent at least six hours, in an enclosed space, with Finn, Paige spent about an hour and a half in her daddy’s company.

And thus, when Rey gets up to Paige, and takes a moment to get a feel for her, she smiles. Paige certainly has the virus; it’s there, but just a tiny tinge of it.

She lets the sleeping baby lie, creeps out, closing the door quietly, and then heading to Rose and Finn's bedroom. "I’ve got the start of a plan. I'm going to see if Chewie can help.” In other circumstances that would have likely gotten some questions, but Finn just groans a bit, and Rose curls into a tighter ball, shivering harder.

 

 

* * *

She’s at the Falcon a second later. “Chewie!”

A moment later, he sticks his head out of the hatch. _Rey?_

“Sorry to wake you.” She explains what’s going on, and follows that with, “How’s the air cycling on the _Falcon?_ ”

_Good enough._

She takes his hand, and lets her senses flow through him. “And you can’t catch Hiffa.”

_Can’t catch most viruses that humans can get._

“Feel like doing some babysitting?”

_Sure._

“I’m not sure if it’ll work, but I’m going to see which of the kids have a tiny viral load, see if I can kill it, and then get them on the ship with you. Get them out of here.”

_We can do that. I’ll get it ready. Just make sure you’re right about killing it. I’ve got one refresher, so I’m in no situation to deal with a bunch of kids with tummy bugs._

Rey’s about to leave when she remembers last night. “Chewie, was that all right? Last night?”

_Did you see it not being all right?_

“I’m checking. You said, before, you wouldn’t be in the same place with him.”

Chewie shrugs a bit. _If he was still the same man he was when he killed Han, I wouldn’t be in the same place with him, but… If Han can forgive it, and he can start acting like a person… how can I not tolerate him?_

She gives him a hug. “Thank you. He’s…” she’s not even sure what the word would be for this. “Intense, about you. Regrets what he did to you.”

_He damn well better. Not like he accidentally stepped on my toe or broke one of my toys._

“Yeah, he knows.”

_Good. Get me the kids._

* * *

“Okay, Paige, come here, Sweetie” Rey says to her niece.

Paige looks irked to be up this early. She’s annoyed by the fact that her mama isn’t cuddling her. She’s disturbed by the loud retching sounds coming from the refresher, and the moaning between retches. She doesn’t much like the smell also coming from the refresher, and Rey doesn’t blame her one bit.

And, as a ten month old, she’s expressing being irked the only way she knows how, by crying, loud and incessantly, because according to Paige, getting some cuddles with Mama and nursing is pretty much the only thing that could possibly fix matters.

 

 

“Sorry, baby, I’m pretty sure that’s a really bad idea, now.”

Paige is utterly un-mollified by that.

Rey closes her eyes and feels the virus moving through the baby in her hands. It’s just wisps of it, right now. Faint smears of black muck. She can feel Paige’s light, her immune system, gearing up, ready to fight, and she boosts it, a bit, feeling it attacking the black muck.

She focuses down further, feeling her own light, and setting it against the black. It’s slow, and tiring, but she can surround and crush it. Split it up, scatter it, feed it to Paige’s immune system, which is avenging against it, roaring in victory.

The little girl in her hands cries, fever spiking, sweating, her intestinal track making some unhappy rumbling noises. She spits up, a little, but by the time they’re done, twenty minutes has passed, and the virus is gone.

“Okay, come on, Paige, I know you’re not feeling very good right now, but it’ll get better soon. We’re going to go to PapaChewie, and he’s going to get you in some clean air, and cleaned up.” Rey doesn’t waste any time, she ports Paige and her stuff directly to Chewie, who isn’t exactly thrilled to be dealing with a messy baby, but, he understands.

He takes the baby girl in his massive hands, half-coos half-growls something comforting at her, and she does calm, a little.

He nods to Rey. _The others?_

_I’m making house calls. We’ll see who we can save from this._

* * *

The correct answer is: Paige. Everyone who spent the whole night in the kitchen is oozing with germs.

Except, apparently, Rey, Savarah, Xanth, and Cassie. The lightsiders with natural healing chops. The lightsiders with natural healing chops, who were so good at this healing thing, they didn’t even have to focus on the virus to kill it. It just waltzed on into their systems, took a look around, and promptly died.

Five of them, against seventeen sick kids, and the Ticos.

And, she likely should have expected this, but Critt and Ostrae are sinking _fast._ Darklings both. Critt not only doesn’t have any healing skills, but his dark is more or less rolling over and just giving up in the face of the virus. Ostrae’s got no Force specialty of any sort, but apparently her personality alone is making her just spiral inward in a dark circle.

Jacen’s up, eyes bright, fever bright, but he’s all over keeping up with Critt. Enjoying getting to ‘help take care of him’ for as long as he can keep standing. Elias and Muni are sick, but not falling too hard too fast, not yet. They’re fairly well balanced, but have enough light, and enough Force to help stall the virus. They’ve got Ostrae. Again, for as long as they can keep standing.

Rey’s looking at them as she’s leaving to go back to the Ticos. Hours… maybe a day, tops, and then it’s going to be her, Kylo when he’s not Mastering, MX-6, and three kids among nineteen violently sick people.

Rey sighs as she heads back to the Ticos. It’s going to be a _long_ week.

Unless… well, her immune system beat the virus into oblivion before it could get a foothold in her system. Cassie, Xanth, and Savarah’s did the same. She got Paige’s to beat it out, too. So… Maybe…

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo wakes with a jerk, head spinning, something just got his attention, but he doesn’t know what.

And a second later, he doesn’t care. His head _hurts._ So does his throat.

“Fuck you, Finn! Allergies my ass…” and then he starts to cough.

“Master Ren?”

That gets a jerk from him again. C8’s voice. Probably what woke him up. He groans, and then opens an eye. Yes, he’s at home, which means C8’s getting him through the comm, which means… “What time is it?” followed by more coughing.

“Fifteen minutes until your meeting with Grand Admiral Schiff. Since your coffee was still waiting at your door, and I didn’t hear or see you, I decided to risk calling.”

“Good plan. Uh…” Kylo seriously thinks about sitting up, but that seems like it would take a stupidly large amount of energy. “C8, talk to Schiff, see if he actually needs to see me today.”

“I can do that, sir. May I ask why?”

“I’ve got a cold. Some asshole didn’t keep his germs to himself, and now I’ve got them, and Schiff is what… Eighty-seven?” Too fucking old to catch whatever the hell this is.

“Eighty-three, sir.”

Kylo burrows deeper under his blankets. It’s really fucking cold this morning. He’s shivering. “If I’ve got this after spending an evening on the far side of the room from the guy, I really don’t want to give it to Schiff, so…”

“Done, sir. I’ll find out whether he actually needs to see you, and if he does, I’ll patch his comm through to yours.”

“Okay. Uh…” He’s so tired. “Uh… If this is just our usual monthly meet up, reschedule it. And… Uh… Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and my datapads. If you could get them all on a tray or something… maybe with some extra blankets… I’ll… stop by eventually and grab them. Try to work from home when I’ve gotten a bit more sleep.”

“I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“Good.” And then Kylo rolls over, burrows deeper into his blankets, mentally curses at Finn some more for giving him a cold, and goes back to sleep.

 

 

* * *

“There’s got to be something you can do, right?” Finn says, wishing he was dead. “Like what you did for Paige?”

Yes, there’s _something_ she can do, but… By the time she got to Finn and Rose’s second thoughts began to creep into her mind. “You probably won’t like it,” Rey says to Finn, who’s half-lying on the floor, half pressing his head against the side of the toilet. She saw how Paige’s body dealt with just a tiny bit of the virus when she ramped up her immune system. Finn’s got a full on raging case of it, so…

 

 

His voice is rough as he says, “We’re both going to be wishing we were dead in two hours if you don’t do anything, and Paige can’t spend forever with Chewie.”

“Paige had barely any virus in her, and…”

“Just do it, Rey.”

Rey looks over to the lump that’s curled into a little ball on their bed. Rose isn’t talking. She’s shivering and sweating and getting worse by the minute so…

“Okay, but…”

“Do it.”

Rey lays her hands on Finn’s shoulders, letting her Force swim through his system, finding his immune system, feeling it fighting, hard, steady. The virus is reproducing faster than the immune system is killing it, for now, but it’s not killing the white cells, which are reproducing faster than the virus.

His body will, on its own, eventually win this fight. She’s just… speeding it up. Giving it reinforcements.

She focuses on that, on the little light sparks flowing through him, making them stronger, making them reproduce, getting more of them into his system, bolstering them in their fight.

She can feel his fever rising further, and he’s shaking harder, and then he’s not under her hands because he’s lurched up to start throwing up again.

Rey’s wincing as he messes himself. She’s got his immune system on overdrive, and his immune system is fighting the virus, by excreting it and cooking it. She stays next to him, gently rubbing his back as his body does everything it can to empty itself, and when he’s done, slumped back on the floor, she lets herself feel what she’s done. “Two days, maybe three. They’ll be rough, but you won’t be down with this for ten days.”

He nods, weekly, lying on his side again, eyes closed, skin slick with sweat.

“You empty?” she asks.

“Maybe.”

He’s… looking off. In a way Rey really doesn’t like. And she’s starting to have second… third… thoughts about having done this. “Okay, I’m going to clean you up as well as I can, then get you to the medbay. You’re likely going to need intravenous fluids, and Rose isn’t going to want to share a bathroom soon.”

He groans at the thought of Rose, and then whispers, because his voice won’t hold for regular speech, “Don’t do this to her.”

“How bad does it hurt?”

“Bad.”

“Okay. You just lie there.”

 

 

* * *

She _can’t_ get Finn cleaned up. Every time she tries, he’s wracked with more spasms. There shouldn’t be anything left inside him, and by the third or fourth time he’s just retching, but…

Overkill. His immune system is fighting _hard_ right now.

Too hard.

She’s not sure if she can get it calmed back down, either. Or if she should try to mess with it any more than she already has.

 

 

* * *

MX-6 looks, as much as something with one expression can, concerned when Rey ports in with Finn cradled in her arms and Force, and very gently lowers him onto to one of the cots.

“What did you do to him?”

“Super-powered his immune system.”

MX-6 tuts. “Are you sure that’s wise, Rey?”

“No.”

Finn’s on his side, shaking. The droid steps closer, his “hand” which is set with several sensors, pressed to Finn’s forehead. “His fever is at 40.1, and he’s dehydrated…”

“You said that’s common with Hiffa.”

“Dehydration is, but usually not this soon after onset, and his temperature is much too high.” The droid heads, quickly, to the supply room and comes out a moment later with a cooling blanket. As it’s swaddling Finn in the hydromesh fibers, it says to Rey, “Most viruses and bacteria cannot survive at more than 37.2 temperature. The immune system, when working normally, will boost above that level. That said, humans cannot survive at above 40, not for long.”

 _Shit._ Rey doesn’t need MX-6 to fill in the blanks for her. Get someone’s immune system working too hard, and it’ll cook them just as well as the germs.

“Might I suggest, that if you experiment with this more, that you don’t ‘superpower’ any more immune systems. Maybe just a slight tweak?”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Oh yes. The next few hours won’t be much fun, but I can keep him hydrated and cool enough to avoid any permanent damage. If we couldn’t, this absolutely would have been fatal, but as is, it’ll just be deeply unpleasant.”

Rey grits her teeth. “Wonderful.”

“That said, dehydration is a very serious side effect of Hiffa, so when you are out and about, keep watch for signs of it. We’ll likely need to run IV fluids in everyone with it, at least some of the time.”

“Do we have enough IVs?”

MX-6 looks around. Right now the medbay has four beds set up. “I have eight beds, and I’ll get them set up. So as long as we don’t have to do everyone at once, I should be fine.”

“Force willing.”

 

 

* * *

“By all means, let the Master rest. The last thing we need is everyone coming down sick,” Schiff says to C8. “Besides, for the first time since our meetings began, the only thing I have to report is that we’ve actually met our monthly targets. And that will certainly hold.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll let him know.”

“Did he tell you what he’s down with?” Schiff asks. He probably shouldn’t be, but he is curious as to what, possibly Kylo could have caught. And part of it is genuine curiosity. And part of it is that he, like the rest of the general staff, knows that, somehow, Kylo leaves the ship at night, and goes somewhere, and if he’s got something exotic, that could help them figure out _where_ he goes.

“He said it was a cold, and I could hear him coughing. Why sir?”

Schiff’s grinning. “Because my wife makes the finest hot toddy ever. Whatever she puts in there’ll cure anything that ails you. I have a feeling she’ll appreciate him deciding my old bones didn’t need to be exposed to whatever plague he’s got. She’ll stop by with a flask of it for him sometime today.”

“I’ll make sure he gets it, sir.”

 

 

* * *

Schiff remembers the first time he noticed that Ren might be worth something. By the time the biggest chunks of the debris from the _Supremacy_ were cleared, and they had a rough count of who among the officer class was still alive, Admiral Schiff was the highest ranking, longest serving naval officer. (Though they did have to call him in from the Uquistor system, 297,000 light years away from the _Supremacy_. Which did, indeed, have a lot to do with him being the highest ranking, longest serving naval officer left.)

And, he was the only one Hux could stand. (Possibly because the entirety of the two of them interacting with each other was a ten minute call in which Hux informed him of the disaster with the _Supremacy_ and pointed out he needed a Grand Admiral, ten minutes ago, and barring that, as soon as possible. The trip, at hyperspeed, should have taken nine days. He got his personal Navi team to cut it down to six. And then he took command, through his comm system, while en route. When he arrived, he’d been running what was left of the First Order Navy, save the _Supremacy,_ for almost a week, competently. Then he showed Hux the navi chart they used, and from then on Hux was almost bordering on pleased with him.)

So that put him in a very good position.

After the battle of Crait, he, like most of the professionals in what was left of the First Order, was stuck in a situation where they could back the technological wonder child who very clearly spurted in his trousers when he blew up an entire system, or they could back the unstable rage puppy with the Vader fetish.

And though all of them would have preferred a different set of people to champion (many hearts broke the day it became clear that Captain Phasma was not going to be rejoining the high command, in that she seemed fairly stable and was decently popular with the troops, she was the one many of them _wished_ had survived), that’s who they had.

And for Schiff, it wasn’t even a remotely difficult decision.

At almost 81, he was too damn old to go rogue again. It was one thing when the Emperor fell, thirty-three years ago. He was in his prime, and he had a command of professionals he could count on. Back then he didn’t need to even think about it. He watched the second Death Star blow, sent the order for his command to get out and regroup, and once everyone still alive had been counted, he and his got out of anything approaching Rebel territory and began to reassess the situation with an outlook as to what was likely to happen next.

For Schiff and most of his colleagues, execution for war crimes was the answer, so they decided not to attempt to seek a peace.

And between then and Snoke’s rise, he and his gathered strength, and took over a fairly comfortable chunk of the galaxy.

That fairly comfortable chunk was, unfortunately, located too close to Snoke. And when Snoke rose, Schiff ran the numbers, and rapidly decided that if he stood against him, he’d be ground to dust, but if he offered to take him and his in, they’d likely be able to continue as they had been. So, he threw in with the monster.

When Snoke fell, he was too old, and didn’t trust enough of his command, to go rogue.

So, the technological horror or the rage puppy.

Schiff went all in for Hux. Even with what Hux had done to the Imperial Officer class. Even though Hux wasn’t much of a military tactician; he enjoyed killing people way too much to be a functional military leader. If Schiff had had his way, Hux wouldn’t have commanded anything that was even close to lethal. Instead, he would have given Hux as many credits and people as he wanted and let him build his own research center. In the hands of a competent tactician, Starkiller, that tracking device, the plethora of other gadgets Hux came up with, would have made the most effective military force ever to fly this galaxy.

And while Hux didn’t have a whole lot of use for Imperials, he very much had a use for Imperials who were good tacticians who actually understood what he did and appreciated it.

So, yes, once it became clear Snoke was out, and Ren was in, and Hux was going to get him out, Schiff went all in for Hux. Better a genius sociopath, a _predictable_ genius sociopath, than a toddler having tantrums.

The day Schiff arrived, Hux had called together a meeting, with all of what was left of the high command, and Ren, and offered up a carefully curated collection of things that needed to be done to get the First Order into something remotely like flying shape. Anyone with any technical background could see that some of the things on the list were the equivalent of buffing the rivets to a high shine, (and one of them literally _was_ buffing the rivets to a high shine) and some of them were literal life and death matters.

The idea was to have Ren set the ‘priorities’ of the list.

Hux, of course, had set this up for Ren to pick the obvious, and in several cases, _wrong,_ things, to show off how incompetent he was as a leader. Because, after all, at that point, not everyone was all in for Hux, and not everyone understood what he could bring to the table as the Supreme Leader.

Schiff, having written half of the list, _understood_ that the man who sent the whole fleet after one fucking  ship less than an hour after the Navy had been decimated by a suicide attack, was not competent to be anywhere near the Supreme Command, so he was willing to do what was necessary to take him out.

Granted, at that point, literally all he knew about Ren was his folly at Crait, his reputation for extremely destructive temper tantrums, that he was a personal attaché for Snoke, and that he had some sort of Force skills. And he had his entire army shoot at a phantom. (At least, according to Hux, Ren was screaming about shooting something, but none of them could see whatever it was. Other versions of the story indicated Luke Fucking Skywalker was there, withstood the bombardment, because of course he did, and then Ren took the field and physically cut him in half. That’s part of the reason Schiff backed Hux, Luke Skywalker appearing out of nowhere to stand off against the land force of the First Order sounded like a ghost story. But… Schiff wasn’t there. And in the years since, he’s come to the conclusion that Luke Fucking Skywalker probably was there, but it also didn’t matter. Ren’s not the first commander he’s served under to see the occasional ghost or make a stupid decision. He is one of the few who’s attempted to learn from his mistakes and do better, and that’s worth a LOT.)

So, he walked in with his mind shut. That rumor about Force sensitivity was far too likely to be true, so he thought about literally nothing but the contents of the list.

He expected Ren to just glance at it, pick the top five, and then command they do them.

He was pleased to see Ren actually read _every_ item on the list. (The list was one hundred and seventy-three items long, intentionally.) And… he didn’t hate seeing Ren carefully question Hux on some of the items which, given the dense tech writing around them, Ren didn’t understand, but once he grasped they were in fact the equivalent of buffing the rivets, he just _looked_ at Hux, and Schiff realized that Ren knew _exactly_ what Hux was doing.

For a heartbeat, Schiff tensed, ready and waiting for Ren to pull his saber, and Hux to pull that mono-molecular blade he was rumored to keep on his wrist, but Ren went back to reading the list. Apparently, he knew, for the time being, he needed Hux to keep the First Order flying.

And that intrigued Schiff, because apparently, there was a chance that Ren might actually win this thing. There was a chance Ren might, possibly, be good for the First Order. Sitting there, watching Ren read the list, the idea that maybe there might be someone who wouldn’t run the First Order into the ground, or kill it for kicks and giggles, began to spread through Schiff’s mind.

As he was realizing that, Ren looked up at him, just for a few seconds, and then went back to the list. 

And then Ren continued to read the entire list. And asked more questions. And then he began to pick.

He got the obvious ones. _Obviously_ , hull structural integrity, restoring the grav field to the entire ship, restoring life support to the whole ship, and full communications through the entire fleet _had_ to happen. If he hadn’t picked them, they likely would have just started ignoring his orders from that moment on.

Then he spent a moment looking at the list, and said, “Air cycling? Is that not part of life support?”

“No, Ren,” Hux replied. Half the table tensed because Hux hadn't said Supreme Leader or My Lord. They slowly relaxed as it became clear Ren wasn't going to hit him for it. “It’s the system that cleans the air.”

Ren’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he just _looked_ at Hux again. Schiff doesn’t know what Ren was thinking. He does know what he was thinking, namely the rumor that Hux got his rank by offering a report on the woeful inadequacies of the security of the kitchens, taking advantage of said inadequacies, slipping poison into the kitchen system and not being willing to administer the antidote until he got his stripes. (And the fixes he designed to safeguard the kitchens were approved.)

Snoke gave him those stripes.

The kitchen improvements were implemented.

And everyone didn’t die.

“Cleans it how?” Ren asked.

“In a good system, if filters out dust particles, makes sure the gaseous mix is ideally suited for the people on the ship, kills germs.”

Ren nodded, and looked over the list. “We don’t need a state of the art one to keep flying, do we?”

“It will have absolutely no impact on the ability of the _Supremacy_ to keep flying,” Hux replied.

But Schiff, and anyone else who knew ships, which was at least two third of the officers at that table, knew that without correct air cycling, they’d all die of CO2 poisoning, or someone would get sick and it would spread through the ship like wildfire, or just… Just dust. Without cycling, the dust builds up, and it gets static charges, and next thing you know a chunk of your ship just exploded.

But, no, it doesn’t, immediately, or literally, effect the ability of the ship to fly, at all.

Kylo spent another moment reading, and then nodded, and said, “When we do the life support systems, make sure air cycling is working properly, and upgrade it if it needs it. The absolute last thing we can afford right now is for our surviving soldiers to get sick.”

The rest of the crew looked at each other, and one, General Hapian, said, timidly, “My lord, what about our weapons system?” There were multiple versions of upgrade/fix/secure/improve the weapons systems on the list. Schiff still isn’t sure if Hapian asked about the weapons because he was one of Hux’s plants, or because, as a General, he didn’t exactly grasp how precarious their situation was.

Either way, Kylo said to him. “Who exactly do you think is going to attack us? The Resistance is down to one ship, and when they called for help, no one was willing to come. Thanks to General Hux, the New Republic is no longer an issue. Our surviving fighters and destroyers will keep us covered as well as we’ll need, but for the time being we have to secure the space we all currently _living_ in.”

One of the others, and Schiff knew he was a Hux plant, asked, “Shouldn’t we at least attempt to find the number of dead and wounded.”

Ren sagged a little, and then said, “We already know the number. Too many. But the dead aren’t going to get any less dead. And if we haven’t found someone who’s wounded by now, they aren’t going to survive. So we’ll focus on getting our home back and flying so we have a place for our living members.”

That was the moment that Schiff switched alliances.

He knew, that given time and enough money, Hux could design a fantastic air cycling system. Assuming those reports that Hux wrote after Ren gave his commands were even close to true, he did. He also knew that Hux was the kind of man who might put poison in it just for kicks.

Ren, meanwhile, chose it, over weapons, over his own comforts (and they were on the list) because he didn’t want his men to get sick.

And now, more than two years later, as the chill of old age is seeping into Schiff’s bones more and more each day, he’s appreciating that again.

Because if whatever cold Ren has is the sort of thing that would take him down overnight. It’s the sort of thing that could have killed Schiff.

And when he explains it to his wife, she’s also pleased by the idea that Ren valued her husband’s health enough to not meet with him.

Though, because she’s been with the Empire, and then several years when Schiff was a renegade on his own, and then the First Order, she does ask him, “Do you think the air cycling Hux put in works?”

Schiff sighs. “I’ll put it on the list of things to double check.”

Just because Hux could design an amazing air cycling system, and just because he reported implementing one, didn’t mean he did, or for that matter that he didn’t sneak some sort of kill switch in there, just because the idea of using it amused him.

And if the Master is sick, now would be an excellent time to make sure the air cycling on the _Supremacy_ works. 

 

* * *

On Rey’s second set of rounds through the Maji, Jacen and Critt volunteer to be test subjects. She can feel that for Jacen, this is a chance to be useful, in a way most of the rest of the group just _can’t._ As soon as there’s someone besides Rey who’s vaguely adult and functional here, the better. Plus, (and this is likely a sign of exactly how sick Jacen is, normally he’s much better at keeping his desires under wraps) he’s clearly radiating that the sooner he’s feeling better the more he can put into taking care of Critt (he’s got some awfully detailed fantasies of doing so), who’s a shivering lump in the next bed, occasionally moaning.

That said, one of those moans is “Me, too.” so, apparently anything Jacen can do, Critt can do, too.

Maybe. Rey’s feeling awfully skeptical about attempting to mess with Critt’s system.

She doesn’t pump Jacen’s immune system nearly as high as she did Finn’s, but, just like with Finn, in a matter of minutes he’s gone from bad to worse, and any hopes he may have had at taking care of Critt are gone in a wave of stomach emptying nausea and brown-green excretions.

She did not, apparently, nail _slightly_ more.

Which means bringing Jacen to the medbay, where he, too gets his own cooling blanket, IV drip, and a gentle sponging off as needed. (Which he, unfortunately, needs more often than he’d like.)

MX-6, by virtue of his mechanical face, _cannot_ look skeptical, but apparently he can project that feeling awfully strongly, as he’s swaddling yet another of Rey’s charges in a cooling blanket to keep his body from cooking his brain past the point he can heal.

Or maybe it’s just staring at two people she’s more than rather fond of, who, in her attempt to make them better, all she appears to have done is make them _worse_ is eating at Rey.

Then she’s back to Critt. “Are you sure you want to try this?”

He’s pale, and shaking, but not quite at the puking up his guts part of the illness, yet. “If you can figure this out, all of us can get better fast, right?”

“Faster.”

“Bring it on.”

“Okay.”

With Critt she keeps him at about half as much as Jacen and gets the same result, if slightly less bad.

Sitting between Critt and Finn in the medbay, Rey’s gritting her teeth, and getting the sense that when you get a nasty virus your immune system goes after it as hard as it can _without killing you_. Making it do more is likely _not_ a good plan.

 

 

She wonders how many of the first Jedi accidentally killed their patients by pushing their immune systems too hard. 

She sits between them, head in her hands, and tries to think, or barring that, _feel_ a way to make this _better._

 

 

* * *

Two hours after talking to the Grand Admiral, C8 adds a small flask, with a pretty ribbon around the neck, to the tray of breakfast, lunch, and dinner sitting on the table in Kylo’s room. Attached to the pretty ribbon is a note: “Grandmere Schiff’s hot toddy. Pour 10 mls into warm tea or cider. Good for sore throats and cough. Thanks for not spreading the germs! –Thea Schiff”

After all, just because her husband has obtained the highest rank in the Order, short of Master of the Order, doesn’t mean that Thea Schiff stopped playing the game.

“Thoughtful” little gifts to keep your commanders thinking well of you is part and parcel of being an officer’s wife, and she’s _very_ good at her job.

Making sure the other officers’ wives that she likes also get a heads up, is _also_ part of the job. After all, a good tide rises all boats, and Thea Schiff isn’t about to let a good tide go to waste.

By the time her husband has gotten the first report back on the full diagnostic on the _Supremacy’s_ air cycling system (Yes, it works just fine. Yes, there’s a kill switch in there. And yes, they found the cyanide tubes. And, of course, yes, as of right now, there doesn’t appear to be a way to remove the tubes without killing the _Supremacy’s_ life support system, but… Well, that’s why they’ve got engineers and back-up systems. _Fucking Hux!_ ) there is a collection of little bottles of various teas, salves, lozenges, and home remedies from all over the galaxy, each with a thoughtful little note, all waiting for the Master or his Lady to come pick them up.

 

* * *

There’s a heartbeat where Kylo’s awake and doesn’t know why he’s awake. A moment when he’s just blinking and…

And it’s over, and his body is _bolting_ for the refresher as fast as it can while trying to simultaneously curl in on itself as his guts scream and spasm into the worst cramp he’s ever had.

Whatever the fuck Finn brought home, it’s _not_ a bloody cold.

It’s almost bad enough for him to call out to Rey, but if he’s this sick, and she’s… not here… Fuck… He doesn’t know if she’s sick or well or tending to others, and… He hurts. He hurts so bad, and his body is spewing everything he’s ever eaten out of it, and…

And in a moment he went from being afraid to call out because he doesn’t want her to get ill, to being so bad off he can’t focus down well enough to scream out with his Force for hers.

 

 

* * *

“Rey?” Xanth says to her, as she’s making rounds. Mostly just cleaning up, making sure the sick kids have blankets and towels and a soft hand to pet them from time to time. Make them feel more comfortable.

“Hey,” she says, quietly.

“We’ve got the kitchen and chapel cleaned out. There’s not a speck of virus alive in either of them.” Granted, that wasn’t terribly difficult. Hiffa can’t survive below 15 degrees for more than an hour, so they just opened the doors to any room that didn’t have people in it.

“Good.”

Xanth nods to Opal and Tourine, both of whom are lying on the floor. They’re hot, so, so hot, and the floor is cool tile, so that’s where they are. “They look so sad.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Immune boosting doesn’t work?”

She half-shrugs. Finn might be getting better, at least, his fever’s gotten low enough he’s no longer in the danger zone. “The side effects are really nasty.”

“Oh.” He sits on the floor next to the twins, gently stroking their shoulders, getting a feel for the muck of the virus. “Have you tried killing it?”

“A little, with Paige. It’s reproducing faster than I was killing it.”

He nods, and then says, “Every one dead is one that doesn’t make any more viruses.”

“That’s true. Feel it. Can you find a way to kill them without having to do it yourself?”

“Why not myself?” He’s looking up at her, concerned.

“How many hours do you want to spend doing this? Everyone still needs nursing and cleaning and tea and…” And Rey’s been up for almost twelve hours now, which isn’t unusual, but she only got three hours of sleep before that, so she’s _tired._

Xanth nods. “Let me see what I can do.”

“Thanks. It’s been a long day, make sure all of you get rest, too.”

“Uh huh… Are you getting a nap?”

Rey looks at the twins on the floor. She’s not really doing anything to help anyone, just going from cottage to cottage and mopping up messes. But right now, she can’t think of anything else that might help. She just feels stuck.

And maybe part of being stuck is she hasn’t eaten anything since dinner and it’s well past lunchtime. No food and three hours of sleep isn’t a good combination for easy work. And this isn’t easy work.

Rey stands up. “Yes, actually. Sleep and food. We can’t take care of anyone else if we’re exhausted. I’m going to rest a bit, and I’ll make rounds again before dinner. And maybe, if I actually rest, I’ll get some new ideas for how to fight this.”

Xanth nods at that. “Good. I’m off to Kven’s next. We’ve always gotten on well, maybe I’ll have better luck with his system.”

Rey nods, and heads toward her cottage.

 

 

 

* * *

Rey’s a few steps from the door when she feels it. The rush of fear and pain and…

She’s bounding forward, into the house, and as soon as she does, she feels it, and smells it. Kylo didn’t dodge this bolt. She winces. She’d been so focused on everyone else, that she just didn’t think… Kylo’s always so _Kylo._ He kept fighting with what would have been on anyone else a mortal wound, with a saber through his shoulder, with… He’d go weeks without sleep back in the day. He’s indestructible. She knows, rationally, that he isn't, but... He  _is._

The idea that he even could get sick just never occurred to her.

But it should have. She’s mentally berating herself for not checking in on him the minute she saw how fast Critt and Ostrae were dropping.

“Kylo?” He’s obviously not in their living area or kitchen. “Love?” Her voice is low, and she’s hoping to find him curled into a ball, sleeping.

He’s not on their bed. And really, if she can feel the waves of pain, she knows he’s not going to sleep through them.

The door to their refresher is shut.

“Kylo?” She’s intentionally keeping her voice low. His pain’s eased off some, a general ache instead of flaming rips of pain through his guts. Now there’s just this muzzy murk on the far side of the door.

“I’m gonna come in, okay?”

That gets a response. _No._

She rests her hand on the door. He’s hurting, well, they all are. And likely messy, but… Not like she hasn’t been hip deep in sick today. Embarrassed, but… well… Again, everyone who’s got this is in pretty sad shape, so… He won’t be the first person who didn’t get the right part of himself aimed at the toilet in time, and given how this is going, he’s not going to be the last, either.

She sits against the door, back to it, and lets her Force find his, and just like Critt, which should have been a major clue, his system is _useless_ at this. The germs are rampaging around through him, meeting pretty much no resistance.

His fever is high, muscles shaking, sweating… seems to have gotten himself into the shower, so he’s got water running over him, so there’s something… It’s not the mess, the shower’s helping with that, so it’s not too bad, it’s the smell. He _hates_ the smell.

 

 

 _Yeah, I could have gone the whole rest of my life without ever smelling that, too._ She thinks to him.

She feels a tiny little half smirk on the other side of the door. And then feels the whimper. Even that level of moving hurts.

 _How long?_  She thinks to him.

_I don’t know. I… C8 woke me up. I wasn’t feeling good. I told him I had a cold and went back to sleep._

“That was smart, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is sleep.” She can feel the sound of her voice is too harsh right now. Any sound is.

_Not sleeping anytime soon. What time is it?_

_Early afternoon. Bit after lunch. Have you eaten anything?_

_Not since last night._

_You keeping anything down._

_No._

_Okay._

He’s quiet for a long time, just lying there, on his side, letting the water flow over him, not really present, or too present in how awful his body feels right now. Eventually, though he thinks, _You’re not sick?_

_Me, Savarah, Xanth, and Cassie didn’t get it at all. Chewie’s immune. Paige had a small enough dose of it, I could kill it, and she’s with Chewie now._

_Good. Everyone else?_

_Everyone else._

_Can you do anything for them?_

Rey sighs. _Sort of. Finn and Critt and Jacen decided to be the test subjects. I can…_ she makes herself not sigh in defeat… _‘help’ your immune system, make it do a better job fighting this._

She feels him almost perk up at that idea.

 _Yeah, don’t get excited. All I did was make them go from bad to worse. Increasing your immune response means the fever spikes higher, you shake harder, your body gets rid of_ everything _faster, and… off to the medbay with you for IV fluids, cooling blankets, and round the clock mopping off. Hopefully, you feel better in a few days instead of a week. That’s the trade off. Right now Finn, Critt, and Jacen would tell you, if they could talk, but they can’t,_ not _to do it._

He groans out loud at that. Hurt long and slow, or hurt excruciating and faster.

 _You want help?_ she thinks to him.

 _I want to die._ They both know he’s not, really, serious.

_Too bad. Not happening today._

She feels him tentatively attempt to move around a little, and the way _everything_ hurts.

_Can this actually get worse?_

_I really can’t tell from this side of the door. What I can say, with absolute certainty, is there’s nothing on the side with you I haven’t already seen and smelled at least three times today, and I’m sure cleaning things up a bit and airing them out might make you feel a little better._

He’s not thinking in words, just feeling the shame of being so sick he can’t clean up after himself, and so sick he needs to. That’s at war with the idea of maybe some clean towels in here, or possibly the room smelling a little better, and just having her nearer would make him feel better.

_You won’t catch this?_

_If I was going to, I’d be in there with you, also lying on the floor. I wasn’t just in the Falcon with Finn helping to unload, I also hugged him and he kissed my cheek when he got back, and you got home an hour into the fruit cooking party, so… If I could get this, I’d be down with it._ She also hits him with a little flash of what they were doing last night, while his body was apparently simmering away with germs and hers was happily killing them off en masse.

“Come in.”

She braces herself for a moment, and then opens the door, and… Okay, it’s messy, but… Well, it’s just him in there, not say, him and two hut mates, so… She’s seen worse today.

He’s in the shower, lying on his side, letting the… she tests it, and right now it’s just warm. Their hot water heater is likely doing the best it can, but once the tank is empty, best is just a hair over normal body temperature… Luke warm water rinse over him.

She shuts it off and squats next to him, gently petting his hair and shoulder.

“Hey.”

He nuzzles a little into her touch, but doesn’t say anything or open his eyes. She can feel that he’s shivery, hurting, miserable, his insides on fire, trying to claw their way out, but… He’s empty, too. Nothing left to come out, now. Though that wasn’t true when he crawled in here. He was feeling too weak to really walk or sit, so he dragged himself in here, turned on the water, and collapsed on his side. He didn’t want to have to lie in his own mess, and this took care of that.

She strokes his shoulders again, and does what she can to help with the pain.

At least that’s something her Force is actually good for. _Healing_ may be the sort of thing that’s going to be a trial by fire, but comfort… Okay, yeah, he’s not in any way shape or form _better_ but some of the edges have been worn soft.

She sees him relax a little as that hits, and then shiver that much harder when his muscles try to relax.

She offers him a little squeeze to his shoulder.

“Okay, I’m going get you up, dry you off, and then put you in bed, okay?”

“Nghn.”

She understands that as concern from him about not wanting to mess their bed.

“They’re just sheets and an air mattress. We’ll get new ones if we need them. You don’t need to be on a cold, wet tile floor.”

“Mrhmp.”

“Come on.”

She gets him hovering in the air, finds a clean towel, and gently blots him off. And, like with everyone else she’s touched today, even the softest touch makes him ache. “I know, love, I know. I’m going as fast as I can. Get you all nice and dry, and into bed, under the warm blankets.” She feels him perk up a little at the idea of nice, warm blankets. “Hold on.” She spreads the towel on the floor, and gently sets him back down. He makes a slightly annoyed sound at that, but not enough to actually complain.

She can feel just being aware of her has him tired enough that talking either with his voice or mind is too much to ask, so she just explains. “I’m going to get the blankets, and put them in the oven on low for a little bit.

A pleased sort of purr slips through his mind.

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that. Back in a second.”

She carefully picks her way out of the bathroom, grabs the blankets, does stick them in the oven on warm, and then also grabs her rags and cleaning supplies. When she heads back to the bathroom, she sets them on the sink, and then again, gently gets him hovering, this time she slips him through the air to their bed, lowering him onto the mattress. “You’re on top of the sheets right now. Warm blankets coming soon.” She drapes the towel he’d been lying on over him, and remembers she has access to a place with a lot more blankets and towels, and then flashes, fast, to the _Supremacy._ Apparently he’d felt well enough to ask for… quite a bit of food, and… blankets and whatnot. And… Okay, the news must have spread, because there’s this… heap of presents, next to the food and blankets. The only names on the tags she recognizes are Schiff and Mitaka. She grabs them, along with extra pillows, and the datapads on the top of his desk. He’s not going to want them now, but maybe in a few days.

He purrs again when she piles the extra blankets on top of him.

_There’s a bottle here from Lady Schiff. It’s got something in it that’s supposed to be good for sore throats and coughs._

That gets his attention enough, that he explains, _Cancelled my appointment with Schiff. Didn’t want him to get sick. I guess she was pleased._

_Looks like she spread the word. There’s the bottle from her, and something like ten other little get well soon presents. Maybe in a few days, they’ll help you feel better._

But she realizes as she says that, that he’s asleep.

 

 

* * *

The less said about cleaning up the bathroom, the better. Still, in the cosmic scale of things, dealing with puke and shit isn’t _that_ bad. It’s mostly just annoying.

People get sick, they make messes, and sometimes, they aren’t strong enough to clean up their own mess, so they need people who love them to do the cleaning.

She snerks a little at that idea, thinking that if she wrote it down, put it in some sort of pretty calligraphy on a nice piece of paper, and maybe picked some more impressive words, that’d be something Majis a thousand years from now would consider a particularly deep and meaningful meditation on the nature of love.

And maybe it is.

Or maybe it’s just cleaning some stray poop off the floor.

Either way, it’s real.

 

 

* * *

She gets a lot less nap than she’d been hoping for. She just _can’t_ sleep next to Kylo when he’s hurting that bad. He’s asleep, mostly. Every hour or so he lurches up toward the refresher to take care of business, and then she mops him off and tucks him back into bed. But, even if he were fully asleep, just being near him makes her want to _do something._

But right now, she doesn’t know what.

The absolute last thing she wants to do is make him feel _worse._

Right now, as she’s getting ready to drag herself out to check on everyone else, he’s curled into a tiny little ball on their bed. It’s amazing to her how small he can pull himself. A man his size shouldn’t be able to turn into a child-sized lump. But sick and shivery and too hot and too cold and hurting from head to toe, he can.

Rey wants to just sit by his side, hover, pet him, and… her Force may not fix this, but he does seem slightly more comfortable with her near.

But she’s got nineteen other people to tend to, too.

She kisses Kylo’s forehead, the only bit of him peeking out from under the blankets. “I’m going to go check on everyone else. I’ll be back, soon.”

He moans a little.

She bundles up to… and then it occurs to her that she’s been in everyone’s rooms, so there’s no reason for her to walk through the cold to get to them.

She takes the overcoat and gloves and scarf off, and ports directly to the medbay first, to check in and see how everyone is doing.

 

 

* * *

Awful.

Everyone is doing awful.

Finn’s fucking _gray._ Yeah, she did a fucking lovely job there. His immune system is up and working super double overtime, killing those germs left and right, and even with an IV to keep fluids streaming into him, he’s excreting them almost as fast and…

She’s holding his hand, and can feel this, she hasn’t literally killed him, she’s just made him wholeheartedly _wish_ he was dead.

Jacen and Critt aren’t all that much better. They’re at least keeping _some_ fluids inside themselves and able to sleep, a little at least.

“Any new ideas on how to _help?_ ” MX-6 asks.

Rey can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not.

Mostly she just wants to rewind time and leave well enough alone.

Time doesn’t seem to be interested in going along with that.

 

 

* * *

She ports from one cottage to the next, wiping up messes, applying cool, damp towels to foreheads, making sure that everyone who can keep a little tea down gets some. (Or everyone who isn’t throwing up yet gets as much tea as they can hold. She’s fairly sure that starting everyone off well-hydrated helps some… right?)

As she shifts from home to home, she finds Cassie, Xanth, and Savarah with their friends. Cassie was getting a rest. Xanth was sitting with Kven, holding his hand, staring at him. Rey can feel he’s thinking and feeling, so she doesn’t interrupt. Savarah’s with Magiit and Marrock. Both of them are pale and shaky, but still in the coughing stage of things. She’s got them sipping tea and resting.

Calm before the storm.

Rose is full in the storm. Rey gently gathers her up and ports her to the medbay.

This time MX-6 appears to be pleased. “Good timing, she’s just on the verge of dehydrated. We’ll get an IV going. It’s probably time to start bringing in everyone else who’s gotten to the throwing up part of this. Cycle them through so we can get more liquids into them.”

“How long does an IV bag take?”

“Half an hour.” He looks to the three beds with Critt, Jacen, and Finn in them. “I can take five at a time now.”

“Fortunately, right now, we don’t have five in need of fluids… Yet.” Rey’s looking around at the empty beds, and thinking about who’s going to need them, soon.

And who needs one, now.

 

* * *

 

Kylo’s skin isn’t gray with dehydration. But the only reason Rey knows that is because she’s seen Finn. Otherwise, she’d think Kylo’s gray. And, for a moment, part of her wants to take him to the medbay, here, where she can stay nearer to him.

And part of her knows that if he’s in the medbay, he’s going to get one eighth of MX-6’s attention, because the droid won’t play favorites. Or she can take him to the _Supremacy_ where they will devote _more_ than enough medical attention to him, only him, and no one else.

“We’re going back to the _Supremacy._ ” She says, as she starts to gently lift him a bit, cradling him in her arms. 

 

 

He makes a _I’d rather not_ sort of groan. There’s a vague thought in his mind that bringing a virulent pathogen onto a sealed ship with millions of people on it is likely a terrible idea.

“I know, but every IV in our medbay is in use or will be shortly, and you need one, too, so… I’m taking you where you can get one.”

He groans at that, too.

And then he’s in his bed, on the _Supremacy_ and the sheets are too cold, and the blankets aren’t deep enough, and everything hurts, and… _fuck…_

She can feel how much he really didn’t want to move.

And then she feels how much he has to move _now._

And, of all the things Rey’s seen him do, this was likely the top of the list he would have preferred her not to have her witness, but, he trips over his feet three steps into his run for the refresher because he’s hit the point where he just can’t hold himself up all that well. Which means he needs help getting to the refresher and he’s just boiling in the shame of it, but…

Rey hovers him up into the air, making small soothing sounds, and settles Kylo back into bed, really hoping he’ll just passes out again soon. He doesn’t actually need to go to the refresher because there’s nothing left in him to come out. Probably another hint she needed to get him hooked up to an IV a lot sooner.

He moans as the sheets touch his skin. _COLD!_

Nothing much she can do about the sheets being cold here, but… She probably could put them in the oven, and they’d still feel cold to him. She nestles Kylo into the bed, strokes his hair and face, feels him writhe and moan for a few minutes, dry retching, and then settle back down into mindless oblivion.

She kisses his forehead. “I love you.” Then she heads to the door to his office.

“C8,” Rey says; she’s not entirely sure where the droid is. Not in Kylo’s room.

But, within seconds of her voice, Rey hears the click of metal feet on metal flooring, along with the glow of his eyes lighting up.

“Mistress Ren.”

 

 

“Kylo’s sick. He needs fluids, but can’t keep them down. Can you get a med-droid in here, without everyone seeing/hearing/noticing?”

C8 thinks about it. “How literally do you mean everyone? The med-droids are fairly small, but an IV unit and diagnostic kit, along with whatever the droid deems necessary to take care of the issue can take up space.”

“Don’t need diagnostics. He’s got Hiffa virus.”

“How did he get Hiffa virus? There are only active outbreaks on a handful of planets on the rim.” Kylo’s certainly told her that C8’s not supposed to be able to have emotional processing, but he’s sounding awfully surprised and horrified at this.

She just looks at him.

“Another question about what happens when he’s not here that I’m not supposed to ask?”

“Yes.”

“And I can assume, you’d prefer I didn’t enlist Lt. Colonel Frakes or Grand Marshal Kinear in this endeavor because you’d prefer to minimize the risk of them getting sick.”

“I’d really appreciate it. Especially Kinear. The only people who die from this are very old, very young, or already sick, and I think he qualifies as very old.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Thank you.”

 

 

* * *

Twenty-five minutes later, when a laundry droid comes rolling into Kylo’s room to grab his hamper, (and it does seriously need grabbing, Rey brought their soiled linens with them.) Rey’s very pleased to see it, if a little put out because Kylo’s skin is getting grayer by the moment, and he’s hit the point where he’s not sweating anymore, and if there’s not an IV in him in less than five minutes, she’s porting him directly to the medbay, everyone else be damned.

When, instead of scooting over to the laundry hamper, the top opens and a med-droid, along with a collection of… things, pops out, she smiles.

These med-droids don’t talk. They’re the small spherical units that work mostly on stitchery and patching people up, so they don’t need to. Their various sensors can scan a whole body and figure out what’s wrong, though, so that’s likely all they need.

She gently tugs the blankets off of Kylo, and he complains about that, trying to burrow deeper into her, seeking more warmth, because now he’s cold to go with fever-shivering, but he doesn’t seem to actually wake up.

The droid does its scans, and sets up an IV with both fluids and something to keep his nausea levels down. It then attempts to put the IV into Kylo. _That_ wakes Kylo up.

He’s not on board with that plan, doing his best to get his arm away from the droid. Rey gets a good grip on him, and uses her Force to keep him still while the droid inserts the tube and tapes it in place. She relaxes her grasp on him once it’s done, and Kylo tries to rip the IV out. She’s got to hold him down until he just can’t fight it anymore. And as much as Kylo would prefer her not see him so sick he’s not able to move around well, Rey would have preferred to _never_ have to do that. He hates this so much and he’s hurting so bad, and the IV hurts worse, and right now she just can’t explain to him why he needs it, not in a way he can understand, and… She’ll take a million years of cleaning poop off the floor over having to do this again.

Fortunately, there’s something in the IV to help him sleep, too, or just the painkiller is working, and he goes soft and limp in her arms in a minute or two.

Once the IV is in, and Kylo’s out again, the droid spits out a report for her, and nothing’s new. He’s got Hiffa. He’s dehydrated. (There’s some scolding about not getting an IV into him as soon as he started throwing up, but… nothing she can do about that now.) This particular variant is anti-viral resistant. They can add something to lower his fever, but that’ll just extend the amount of time he’s sick.

She says no to the fever reducer.

The droid hovers in a way that looks a bit like nodding, and then settles on the table, moving into wait mode. In three hours, it’ll switch out his IV, and keep doing that until he can take fluids by mouth. 

 

 

* * *

2/1/2

 

Rey has never felt this useless in her life.

What she wants to do, needs to do, feels like she _should be able to do_ is to settle down, feel the thrum of the Force, guide and ride it, and then make all of her loves go bouncing up, hale and hearty, or, well, maybe pale and shaky, but no longer projectile excreting everything that’s ever had the misfortune to end up inside their bodies.

And, okay, if that’s not possible, she _at least_ should have been able to figure that her favorite Darkling would have come down with this within seconds of it starting up, and gotten his butt here, on the _Supremacy_ within minutes, so that he could have a personal med-droid tending to him, making sure he didn’t get that dehydrated.

Barring that, she’d settle for being able to curl against Kylo, snuggle him, wrap him in her Force, and try to at least _comfort_ him.

And, as long as she’s actively doing that, he seems at least a hair better.

But if she gets up to deal with the nineteen other people, who also need her, he goes back to shaking and moaning.

She hates this, he’s so weak and sad and hurting, every time he gets toward waking up, he flails ineffectively at his IV. If he was healthy, he could pull it out with his mind, and seeing him just sort of slap at it because he can’t coordinate his hand well enough to close around the tube… Her resolve to go and heal everyone else falters. Kylo needs her, and maybe she can’t heal him, but just being near means he’s better, but…

They need her, too. She kisses Kylo and pulls herself away from him. He starts to shiver harder as soon as she's not touching him, so she grabs one of the blankets from home and tucks it over him, careful with his IV line. She sighs at that, all the more reason to get back to Lirium, fast.

She’s doing fuck all as a healer, but because she can teleport, and because the bloody weather is doing everything it can to fuck with them, it’s howling snow at Lirium, so she’s the most effective way to get her Maji from their homes to the medbay, so they too can get hooked up to the IVs.

So, she strokes Kylo’s dry sweat crusted hair, kisses his brow, and then ports back home, to begin shuffling kids from their homes to the medbay, because even if she can’t fix this, she can at least make sure her people don’t die from it.

 

 

 

* * *

It never occurred to her that teleporting would be tiring.

It just _didn’t._

Probably because she’s never done it more than two or three times in a row.

One hour per IV bag. Port one Maji to the medbay, then another, and another and another, until all five of the beds not filled by Finn, Critt, and Jacen are filled. Port them back as they finish. Get new Maji to fill the now empty beds.

On the upside, she’s not on cleaning duty. Which is exhausting and gross. (Though the less said about the condition of her clothing, the better. She’s never wanted to burn her clothing before, but that’s before she spent hours cradling a collection of violently ill people in her arms.)

She’s the only one who can port, so she’s the only one shuffling people around. But by the fourth hour of it, she’s ready to drop.

It’s MX-6 who tells her to stop. “Go home, Rey. Sleep and eat. You’re about to drop, and none of us are going to be better off with that.”

She’s so tired, but… They’re sick. And Kylo’s hurting. And…

She feels a small hand in hers. Cassie’s. She’s looking up at Rey. “Come on, it’s time to rest. You made us rest. Now you rest.”

Rey sighs, thinks about going to the _Supremacy_ and then makes herself go to their cottage.

She won’t sleep if she’s next to Kylo, and she’s got to sleep.

In their home, she remembers something else she hasn’t done. Eat. There’s food. Her body needs it, stomach screaming at her as soon as it sees the food on the kitchen table. The food he thought to ask for before he got too sick to do anything.

She steps closer, almost touches the sandwiches, but seeing the... stains... on her clothing, she realizes she really needs to clean herself up before she does that.

Fast shower. Peeling out of her clothing, throwing it in a sack to bring to the _Supremacy,_ and if it gets back to her, fine, and if it gets lost in the laundry, she won’t miss it.

Then food. She sits down, touching the sandwiches, wishing she could share them with him. The first few bites are difficult. Too many images of partially digested food are in her head for eating to be easy. But her stomach is still yelling for more calories, so she feeds herself.

And once she’s fed, her eyes are all but shut, her arms and legs weigh a billion kilos each and she’s just _so tired._

It feels really bizarre to lay herself down, in their bed, alone. It’s not like this is the first time. He’s certainly had late nights where he was up with meetings past the time she went to bed, but it is the first time he’s not coming back. First time she won’t wake up with him next to her. First time she doesn’t pull off her clothing, because his warmth will come find her in the night.

She pulls the blankets over her, wishing they smelled like Kylo, and not Hiffa virus, but… Right now it’s too damn cold to air the house out, so…

She falls asleep before she’s got too long to think on it.

 

 

* * *

“Luke!”

“Rey.” His expression isn’t warm, but it’s not closed off, either. If anything, he’s smugly amused. And while this is a dream, it’s real, too, so she can feel that he’s enjoying ‘getting to Yoda,’ whatever that means.

In the dreamscape, they’re back at the cliffs at Ahch-To. The air is what she considered cold when she first got there, but now knows is just damp and a bit nippy. (Though damp is something she’d happily avoid for the rest of her life.)

“So?” she says.

“So… Had better days, have you?”

She doesn’t actually glare at him, but it’s close.

He nods. “Yeah. I gave Yoda that same look.” He sits down and pats the ground next to him. “Come on, tell me about it.”

So she sits, and does, and lets all of the day’s frustrations pour out. And when she does, Luke sums it up as: “Everything is wrong, everyone you love is hurting, and you feel like you should be able to fix it, but it’s staying unfixed or you’re making it worse?”

She nods, tossing a pebble into the ocean.

“What are you fixing, Rey?”

She looks at him like he’s stupid, and then says, “Everyone is _sick._ I’ve been puked or pooped on more times than I can count today. Was that somehow not specific enough?”

“Yeah, I got that. Humans don’t normally spew excrement from both sides. _What are you fixing?_ ”

“I’m so tired, Luke. Could you just tell me so I can get back to functional sleep?”

He looks annoyed at that, but given the dark circles under her eyes, and why he’s here, it’s not like she’s making an unreasonable request.

“It took me decades to really figure this out. And I wasn’t ever able to pass it on, because I learned it well past the point of having students. You cannot fix what isn’t broken. Everyone around you is hurting and puking because their bodies are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. When you have a nasty virus you’re supposed to get a fever so your body can kill it.

“That’s the single most frustrating part of The Light. The Force will let you fix things that aren’t broken. It’ll let you do that all day and all night and foul up everything around you because of it. Part of the _light_ is beating your desire to help, to be the great healer, to be the miracle worker, into submission and let whatever it is that is _working_ work.”

“But healing is a light side power.”

Luke nods at her. “Yeah. Healing something that is _broken._ After fifteen years surrounded by kids with lightsabers, the cut or break I can’t heal doesn’t exist. But that’s fixing something that _needs to be fixed._ Ask me what I did when we all got the flu?”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Made tea and passed around the blankets.”

“Didn’t you just say it took you decades to figure that out?”

He waves that away. “I figured it out with healing a lot sooner. Practical application and all that. The main point: ‘if something is the way it’s supposed to be, even if you don’t like that supposed to be, leave it alone,’ took _much_ longer to grasp.”

She’s fairly sure she’s grasping the larger point. “Kylo?”

“Among other things.”

“And going too far on the leave-it-alone side is part of why I couldn’t pry you off this island?”

“Maybe. Did you fix him, Rey? Try? Or did you go expecting him to fix himself, and get horribly disappointed when it wasn’t an instant change? I tried to fix him. Spent a long time on it. And the kicker was, the poor kid _was broken._ Violent sociopath steeped in black from head to toe is not his base nature. Not so far as any of us could tell, and not so far as he is now. I just didn’t have the right fix for him, which is the next part of this: the wrong fix is often worse than no fix at all.”

“I didn’t fix him. I… just thought he’d love me enough to just come, and I missed the point that he couldn’t do that until he loved himself enough to pull himself out of unending pain.”

“Romantically put, but…” Luke gestures a but-what-can-you-do sort of shrug. 

“I want to make them feel better.”

“I know. I wanted to make everyone feel better. All the time. But sometimes, you’ve just got to hurt. And sometimes, if you’re out there, fixing what isn’t broken, you’re going to hurt everyone worse than they already are.”

“Yeah. Great.”

He pats her shoulder. “Exactly. No one said the Force was fun, you know?”

“No one said ever said anything about the Force to me. One day I just had it.”

“One day I was whining about getting to go to town with my buddies. Literally the next day, my family was dead, I was on a ship that looked like it was going to fall apart any second, surrounded by dangerous strangers, attempting to rescue a princess I’d only seen a holo of. Seriously, _no one_ ever said the Force was fun.”

She sighs at that.

“Go on, get back to sleeping. All the problems in the galaxy will still be there when you wake up.”

 

 

* * *

2/2/2

 

Luke is absolutely _not wrong_ about that.

Rey wakes up not enough hours later, but it still feels like too many hours spent on her back.

The first thing she wants to do is port to Kylo and pet him.

But he’s got a med-droid hovering over him, providing him with anything he might _need._

And right here, right now, she’s it. So she washes off, makes herself eat some more, and gathers up the rest of the dinner and lunch so that Cassie, Savarah, and Xanth have food, and ports to the medbay.

MX-6 isn’t there.

Since she’s been sleeping, she hasn’t been bringing sick people to him, so he’s been bringing IVs to them. Unlike the humans on Lirium, he doesn’t have to rely on his eyes to find his way around, so no visibility through the howling snow isn’t an issue for him. (Likewise, he doesn’t get cold, has better all weather traction on his “feet” than humans do, weighs more than they do, so the wind matters less, and can’t get tired, so trekking through the snow isn’t an issue. The hydropacks freezing and having to be thawed before he can hook them up to each patient is.)

Critt is awake when she ports in. His voice is rough, he’s shaking, but his color is decent and his eyes are tracking.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” she says back, voice soft, not wanting to wake Finn or Jacen. They’re both sleeping, but not peacefully. Jacen looks miserable, face pinched, body curled in on itself. Finn’s got a similar posture and expression, but the last time she saw him his skin was gray from dehydration. At least right now he’s back to something approaching his usual color, and he's got enough liquids in him to sweat. “How are you feeling?” she keeps her voice low as she asks.

He looks like he’s almost thinking about barking a short laugh, but that would likely hurt, so he doesn’t. “I’ve had better days.”

“I’ll bet.”

He looks from side to side: Finn on his left, Jacen on his right. “How’s everyone else? Are just the three of us sick?”

Rey shakes her head. Just the three of them are in the medbay right now, because she’s not porting the rest of them in and out. “Just the three of you volunteered to be my experiments in healing magic and ended up in here with IVs full time because I made you worse.”

Critt nods. “Remind me not to volunteer next time.”

“Remind me not to mess with something that’s doing what it’s supposed to do next time.”

Critt’s looking alarmed, and Rey knows what the issue is. She grabs a basin, and pets his back while he dry heaves.

When he’s done, she grabs a damp towel to mop off his forehead some. He sighs, and lays back. “This sucks.”

“Yep.”

His eyes are closed, and his voice tired as he says, “How much faster than usual should I be getting better?”

“With any luck, tomorrow or the next day you’ll just be bone tired, instead of still throwing up.”

“Maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll think this was a good plan.”

“Maybe.” She strokes his forehead again. “Sleep some more. Your body needs it.”

He closes his eyes and in a moment is gone from the waking world.

She looks around, takes a moment to pet Finn and Jacen, sees both of them relax a bit. She can’t fix what isn’t broken, but apparently she can make going through it less of an ordeal.

That’s something, right?

As she ports out to go tend to the rest of the Maji, it doesn’t feel like much.

 

 

* * *

“Xanth?” He’s exactly where he was when Rey last saw him. Probably eight hours ago. Sitting next to Kven, looking far away, thinking/sensing, as he holds his sleeping friend’s hand. And for a second, after her voice, he’s _still_ just sitting there.

Then he jerks, looks at her, shudders all over, blinks, and says, “Rey?”

“Yeah. Hey… Uh… When did you eat last?”

He blinks a few times, looking confused. Then he stands up, and sags back to the ground, knees going out under him.

“Xanth!”

“I’m fine.” He’s wincing. “Legs are asleep. Stayed in the same position too long. Uh, right, food.” He blinks again, and this time slowly stretches his legs in front of him, massaging them, and wincing. “OW!!”

Rey’s not sure what’s going on with Xanth, but… He’s not _sick,_ so… She crosses Kven’s cottage, and grabs a few pieces of bread, and a jar of jam. A moment later, she’s made a sandwich for Xanth, and then returned to the kitchen to wet a washcloth, and gently mops the dried sweat off Kven, who appears to be asleep right now.

Now that she’s got his attention, Xanth looks excited. “You told me to think of other ways to heal them.” He shoves half the sandwich in his mouth in one go, and then has to stop talking while he chews. Once he swallows, he says, “Killing it off virus by virus is a bad plan, and you’re right about that. I was trying that with him, and all I managed to do was make myself tired.”

Rey nods. “If you got it in the first few hours, it’s possible, but after that…”

“Exactly.” He’s eyeing the loaf of bread, and massaging his legs. Rey makes him another sandwich.

As she hands him the sandwich, she says, “That look in your eyes… You’ve found something, haven’t you?”

“Maybe… Not sure yet. I’ve got the idea and feel of it, but I don’t know if I can _do it._ ”

She sits next to him, noticing that he let go of Kven to eat and rub his legs, and as he did so Kven’s face grew tighter. He didn’t wake up, but he looked much less comfortable, but as soon as he takes Kven’s hand again, his face relaxes.

“I was talking to Luke, and he reminded me, or taught me, or… he said you can fix what isn’t broken. Is this fixing something that isn’t broken?”

“No.” He looks fairly excited at this idea, and getting to share it. “It’s breaking something that works too well. I… can do it for one or two at a time, and I’ve got to figure how to do it for a lot of them. The body kills the virus. If we make it do that any harder, it hurts too much. But the virus keeps making more viruses, and that keeps them sick. So… If I can make the virus not make new viruses…”

Rey smiles. “You can do it for a short burst, and then it’s just… too much, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

And with that Rey knows the last piece of the puzzle. Like her, and Cassie and Savarah, Xanth’s _light._ Which is great for his immune system. It works splendidly. It kills the fuck out of invaders before they can even register in his body. But for this sort of work, intentionally using his Force to go in and destroy something… “In a few days, Critt will likely be feeling better.” She hopes.

“Critt… Why Critt?”

“You’re talking about dark-side style healing. About channeling destruction into a positive force. And neither of us are particularly good at that. We need a darksider for it, and Critt’s the one most likely to get better soon.”

“Kylo’s sick?”

“Kylo’s sick. And after testing out my fix for this on Critt, Jacen, and Finn, I don’t want to do it to him.”

“I don’t blame you.” He stands up, wobbles a bit, and then stomps around a bit, wincing with each step. “I got too into it.”

Rey nods to Kven, “How’s he doing?” She can see he’s sleeping, not hooked up to and IV, and he’s pale, but not gray. So, at least just to look at him, he’s as good, if not better, than the others.

“Probably better than most of the others. I can make the virus not reproduce, but it’s slow and draining, and I can’t do enough of them at a time. It’s been…” he looks for a chronometer… “six hours… Way too long sitting in one position. Anyway, I got about a tenth of them sterile, which isn’t enough, but… Okay, here’s the cool part. I did rejigger his immune system a little. The fever makes him so hot the virus has a hard time surviving, and that slowly kills them off. His white cells attack the virus and do what I couldn’t do, kill the boogers right and left. Here’s what I did, I can get his white cells to ignore the sterile ones and focus on the ones that can reproduce, so… There’s something.”

She’s grinning at Xanth. “That’s absolutely something. And, honestly, figuring out a better way to do something, even if you personally can’t do it, is worth so much. Maybe we’ll get Critt on sterilizing, and if you can show the rest of us how to get the white cells to ignore the ones he can’t hit…”

“White cells kill off the ones that make more viruses. Let the fever kill the sterile ones. That sounds like a good combination.” Xanth looks pleased at that idea. Then Kven moans, shifts, his eyes jerk open, and he bolts for the refresher. They can hear the gagging sounds, and as Xanth’s heading over to tend to his friend he says, “I wish I could do more.”

“Yeah, me too. But right now, we can’t.” When Kven’s done, Rey picks him up. “I’m going to take him to the medbay. I want you to eat, and then get a sleep. There’s going to be a lot of mopping up between now and when we can get your fix into play.”

Xanth nods, and then grabs the bread to make himself another sandwich.

 

 

* * *

2/3(?)/2

There’s a point where Rey just doesn’t know what day it is any more. Wake up, eat something, transport Maji to and from the IVs until all of them have had one, go to Kylo, eat, curl up against his back or side and try to nap next to him for a while, (not very effective, she really _can’t_ sleep when he’s hurting this bad) get up, do another round of Maji transporting, another round of eating and tending to Kylo, and then back to their place on Lirium to sleep some more.

But, at some point, eventually, Finn’s actually awake and sitting up when she goes to the medbay. More than that, he’s not excreting from every orifice any more. On top of that, his fever is broken, too. He’s weak as a newborn, _tired,_ so damn tired, but as MX-6 says, there’s no Hiffa left in his sytem.

(MX-6 also says that he’s likely going to spend the next two days in bed mostly just sleeping and slowly putting real food back into his system, but, he’ll be able to snuggle Rose when she’s in the medbay, and that’s worth a lot to both of them right now.)

When she sees him, she hugs him, _gently_ and asks, “Are you really sitting up?”

He blinks a little. “Maybe for another minute or two. What day is it?”

Rey laughs. “I have no idea. It’s night. That part I can tell you.”

He settles back down, squirms a bit, and says, “I can’t wait to get back to my bed.”

She nods at that. “With Rose in it. I’m sleeping in ours, but it feels really odd without Kylo there.”

And right now, Finn’s tired enough that he just agrees. “Always sleep like shit the first night on the _Falcon_ , because she’s not there.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes are drooping.

She strokes his forehead. “Have a good rest. I’ll see you when you’re awake.”

 

 

* * *

At another point, she’s back in Kylo’s room, and he’s awake, too. And, for the moment, not throwing up. He’s not doing much of anything, just laying on his side, eyes glassy, watching the stars move past.

She sits next to him, and lays her hand on his shoulder. He’s still too hot. But he's with it enough he's not trying to rip the IV out any more.

He closes his eyes, and curls around her, chin against her right knee, his knees against her left.

For a moment, they’re just there, and then he says, “You said you can get my immune system fighting harder?”

“Kylo…” She’s stunned he even remembers that conversation. “Yes, I can do it, but… It’s a really bad idea.”

He looks a little surprised.

“It hurts. It hurts a lot. It’s going to be another few days of everything in your body running out as fast as it can, your fever as high as you can take it, and everything aching, as opposed to another five or six days of just feeling cruddy. You aren’t Finn, you don’t have a sick wife at home and a baby who needs you. You can stay on light duty for a few more days. Just… don’t.”

He thinks about that for a moment. “Are you refusing?”

“No. But I’d really rather you didn’t put yourself through it. If you don’t have to hurt, maybe you can try not hurting.” Left unspoken is that she doesn’t want to watch him go through it, either.

His eyes are still fever bright, he’s still achy and shivering, and it’s been less than an hour since he was in the refresher dry heaving away. “I wouldn’t call this not hurting.”

“Yeah, but you’re not begging for death, either, and you’re lucid, He laughs at that. "and you can read or watch holovids and nap, and just take the time to lie around and heal at your own speed for once, so… Do it. I’m sure there’ll be times when you need to be up again in a day, and I’ll make it happen, but this isn’t one of them, so…”

“So just, lay here and be sick.”

“Just lay there, be sick, let me baby you, and maybe see if you can keep a few sips of tea or something located inside your body for more than an hour. Plus, once Critt is up, we’ll be working on another possible fix, and maybe that one won’t involve everyone wishing the Force would just take pity on them and end things.”

He’s about to ask about the other possible fix, and then he’s got to run for the refresher. Anti-emetic meds means he’s throwing up less often, it doesn’t mean the problem is fixed.

 

 

* * *

Jacen is up the next time she’s in the medbay. He’s _up_ up. As in sitting up, next to Critt, who’s sleeping, and petting his hair a bit.

She sits next to him, and says, “Are you really this much better?”

He can feel what she’s asking and rolls his eyes a little. “For the next minute and a half. Then I’m going back to sleep.”

“Ah…” She strokes his forehead. He’s still feverish, but apparently her ‘fix’ has him at not throwing up now, and… “You don’t feel nauseous?”

He shakes his head and coughs. “Tired… So tired, but not puking or shitting anymore.”

“Good.”

He nods. “Hopefully.” He nods to where Finn’s laying, on a cot next to Rose, his hand against hers. “I think I’m doing better than he is. Don’t know if that’s a combination of my Force, getting my system revved up before I had this going full swing against me, or you not tossing me that far into hyperdrive, or just these things effect everyone differently.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

He can feel her concern for Kylo. “How’s he doing?”

“Not as good as you.”

“Obviously. Better than Critt?”

“Not sure. I didn’t supercharge his immune system, so he’s still in the middle of it, and Critt’s got to be getting closer to the end.”

“We can hope.” Jacen yawns.

Rey gives him a hand. “Come on. Back to your own bed. You don’t need the IV any longer, and the sooner you get to sleep uninterrupted, the sooner you’re really up and useful to me.”

He glares at her a little, but before he’s got the chance to do much, she’s got both of them in his cottage. The glare intensifies.

“You didn’t have to pull me away.”

“Yes, I did. You think I really sleep if I’m next to Kylo, right now? No, he’s hurting too damn bad, so I keep trying to make him feel better, which means I’m burning my energy on him. You’re doing it with Critt, too. And, either your fever is too high to realize you’re not keeping your emotions in check, or you’re sick enough you don’t care you’re projecting all over the place, but either way, you need the rest, so…” She pulls back the top blanket to his bed. “Into bed with you. Sleep. Heal. I’ll likely have a project for you and Critt when you’re feeling fully human again.”

Jacen gets into bed, and he quietly says, “How badly am I projecting?”

“I know everything you want to do with your taking care of him fantasy, and assuming he remembers any of this, he will, too.”

“Shit. Yeah. Okay.” He rubs his eyes. “I can usually keep it down enough that he thinks we’re just friends.”

“Why are you doing that? Just let him know.”

Jacen snorts at her, then he looks at Rey, and snorts again. “Of course, you’re one of them. No wonder you don’t see the problem.”

Rey’s staring at him blankly, because she _still_ doesn’t see the problem, and only feels a wall of annoyance from Jacen.

“Because like every other fucking guy I get a crush on, he _only_ likes girls, and I’m not one.”

Rey’s still not sure about the _them_ comment _,_ but decides that’s not the important part. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Just… poke me or something if I start projecting it again. If he figures it out, it’s just going to make him uncomfortable, so… Until I’m in control, let me know, okay?”

“Okay. Go to sleep. You’ll have better control when you’re feeling better.”

“Probably.”

 

* * *

2/? +1/2

 

Round and round and round again.

Eventually, she ports into the medbay, this time with Blaine in her arms, and Critt is sitting up. Eyes clear. Skin dry. Alert (ish.)

He’s on the other side of the virus, and from there…

Rey gently settles Blaine in one of the beds, but he grunts in pain as he touches the sheets. Whimpers when MX-6 inserts the IV. She pets his hair, “I know, honey, I know.”

Her hand stroking his hair eases the pinched look on his face, and the heated blanket that MX-6 drapes over him soothes the shivers, a little.

Rey quietly says, still petting him, “It’s time to sleep, love. Hopefully, you’ll feel a bit better when you wake up.”

Blaine’s eyes drift shut, and in a moment he’s asleep.

Critt watches her do that, and says, “You’re getting really good at that.”

She crosses the room and sits on his bed. “Lot’s of practice. By the time this is done, I’ll be able to put a sick kid to sleep in a second and a half with barely a thought.”

He smirks, a little, and lays down on his side, facing her. “With as tired as we all are…”

“Yeah, it’s not an uphill march.” She strokes his hair, too. “So…”

“Tired, sore, I feel like someone scrubbed out my insides with steel wool, but… Better. I can feel I’m mending.”

She nods, and lays a little of her soothing magic on him. He sighs.

“That feels good.”

“Good.”

He curls in on himself a bit, and his voice is very small as he says, “She always used to call me sweetling. I’d be sick, and she’d hug me and call me sweetling.” He closes his eyes, and Rey understands what he needs.

She curls up behind him, arms around him, and strokes his hair. “Have a rest, sweetling. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

Critt nods a bit, tears leaking from between closed lids. He’s fifteen now, but the little boy inside isn’t very far under the surface. The teen his parents abandoned rather than see go dark is even closer to the surface. Rey kisses the back of his head, and holds him close. She pets his hair.

“When you wake up, when you’re feeling better, you and Xanth are going to have a chat about using your dark to heal people.”

He doesn’t open his eyes as he says, “Can’t heal. Dark doesn’t heal.”

She smiles against the back of his head. “You’ll see.”

 

 

* * *

Kylo’s sleeping when she steps into his room. Like the rest of them, his face is pinched, and he’s curled in on himself. The med-droid is hovering near him, making sure he stays hydrated.

She wonders what those little guys can do. Obviously it’s paying enough attention to the situation to be beneficial to Kylo, but… Does it notice that she just appears a few times a day? Does it keep track of them talking to each other.

And if this one doesn’t, does that mean if there’s ever need for another one, that it won’t?

She sighs at that, and begins pulling her clothing off.

She’s tired. And right now she just wants to curl around Kylo and hold onto him.

He murmurs a bit when she nestles under the blankets with him. His skin is still fever hot, cheeks pink with the flush of it, and the heat feels good to her after too long in not quite warm enough rooms on Lirium.

She knows that in a few moments, she’ll pull back, overheating, but right now wrapping around him and drinking in his heat feels good.

He stirs a bit in her arms, making a pleased sound, and settling a bit deeper into his own sleep.

She rests her head against the nape of his neck, just breathing with him, feeling him relax in her arms, and wondering if maybe this time she’ll sleep.

She’s so tired. Tomorrow… Critt’ll be more up, and put him with Xanth, and maybe they’ll find a way to really beat this, or at least curb it for everyone, and… Okay, they’ll still be sick, but less sick, and healing up faster, and then she and the rest of the lightsiders can just rest for a little while, and Force, that’ll feel good.

Her, and Kylo feeling better, and just sleeping…

Maybe not just… Her sex drive gives her a tiny little twitch of interest, and then it’s run over by the mammoth wave of _tired._

He’s breathing deeper and easier in her arms, and for once it doesn’t feel like he’s hurting, so Rey keeps relaxing, too.

In, out, the heat of his body against hers…

She’s almost asleep, just starting to see the images of her dreams when she hears voices on the far side of Kylo’s door.

Loud fucking voices.

Really loud.

If she can hear them… Through the sound proofing…

C8…

Jon…

She blinks and sits up, awake.

Jon and C8 are arguing, and...

“Shit.”

She pulls Kylo’s bathrobe to hand, and then ports directly into his office, not wanting to open the door and expose Jon to any Hiffa that might be lingering in Kylo’s room. In there, Jon and C8 are, apparently, in the middle of a heated argument, with Artoo between them, looking confused.

Well, confused is about to end, now.

“If either of you fuckers wake him up, I’m slapping your asses into next week with my staff. Now what’s so fucking important I don’t get to have a nap?”

Jon stares at her, stunned, and she can feel C8’s awfully shocked by that, too.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Guys.
> 
> So, apparently, there's a Reylo Fic community on Facebook. It's a thing that if I'd thought about it, I'd have known that it had to exist, but I didn't think about it, until a few days ago when one of the members told me they've got some sort of awards thing, and I'd been nominated for The Chosen One (Best Author) Award.
> 
> Anyway, I know one or more of you lovies had to be behind that, so thank you very much. I really appreciate it!
> 
> And if any of you want to check it out, and spread some love for me, and a lot of other great authors and fics, the link to vote is here: 
> 
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeD8Lv_qWma5XXrMeR_SfE1hxTo2msk9GGBKNuWF7S4StVIUw/viewform


	15. The Snag In the Plan

2/3/2

 

It’s on the fourth day of in depth study of the K’Aran culture and politics, that the newly minted Colonel Jefferies of the Order’s Diplomatic Corp (previously Lt. Colonel Jefferies of the Order’s legal department, now transferred because he speaks diplomat and writes a very spiffy contract) comes into his boss’s office, and tentatively asks General Threepio, “Sir, shouldn’t we, at some point, meet with the Master and talk with him about what he intends to do at this meeting?”

Now, it is true that Threepio isn’t exactly looking forward to a long, or even short, chat with _Kylo_ about this, it’s also true that he’s a professional, and for a professional to do a good job, he’s got to get all of his variables spelled out and into place, and… well… he is starting to get nervous about the huge Kylo-shaped hole where there should be a well-thought-out plan.

But it wouldn’t do to show nerves to his underlings.

“I’m sure the Master will arrange to meet with us at his pleasure. Now, tell me more about traditional succession contracts of previous K’Aran lines…”

And Colonel Jefferies, who can write one of those contracts in his sleep now, does.

 

* * *

2/4/2

 

On the fifth day of in-depth study, meaning two days before the K’Aran delegation will be showing up, expecting to have the Master mediate this succession issue for them, Threepio heaves a great sigh, and says to Artoo.

“I’m swamped with details. Can you call on the Lt. Colonel, and see what it is Ben thinks he’s playing at?” (Threepio is scrupulous about _only_ calling him Ben in his head and to Artoo. He does rather like this job, and would prefer not to be tossed out of it, but not so much that he’s going to completely rewire how he thinks about the youngest Organa.)

Artoo beeps in the affirmative, and goes scuttling off. He’s fond of the young Lt. Colonel, who needs a translator to talk to him, but always does so like he’s a real person, and compared to fetching drinks for whomever Threepio’s next meeting is, this’ll be fun.

(To an extent Jon puts Artoo in mind of Luke. More Luke after he was teaching than Luke when he was young, but there are hints of it, and Artoo likes that. Plus, Jon seems like a rather uncomplicated sort of human. The sort of human who would never just shut him down and then bugger off for a decade, but… Well, he would have never guessed that of Luke, either.)

Besides, heading off to see the Lt. Colonel gives him an excuse to go wandering around, and learn more about the _Supremacy_ and all the fascinating things that live, or in the case of sentient machines like Artoo, dwell here.

He doesn’t take the most direct route to Lt. Colonel Jon, but he does find out that there’s a fascinating bit of gossip going around the ship. Apparently, Admiral Schiff ordered a check of the air cycling system and found a collection of cyanide tubes in there. His engineers are still working on taking them out without destroying the ship or poisoning everyone.

Threepio’s going to go berserk when he gets that bit of intel! Whoever heard of a self-destruct sequence that _only_ takes out the organics?

 

 

* * *

When Jon hears beeping coming from his outer office, he knows something’s off. He likes visiting with Artoo, but he also knows that Threepio doesn’t send him down just to chat, which means _something_ is up.

He sighs. Probably something he isn’t going to like.

He hits the comm between him and his (new) secretary, makes a mental note that he really should move his office out of the design center, and then says, “R4-6837, send Artoo in.”

A moment later, Artoo slides in, and Jon sets the translator for him.

“So, what brings you to Tactical Design?”

Beeps, blips, and a moment later, _“Threepio’s getting nervous. None of us have talked to Kylo about the K’Arans yet, and he wants to know when you did, and that everything is on the up and up.”_

For a moment, Jon just stares at Artoo. Then he rejiggers the translator, and says to him, “Can you say that again? I don’t think this got it.”

Unfortunately, the exact same message pops up after a cheerful collection of beeps, blips, and whirls.

Jon blinks again. “What do you mean no one on your side has spoken to Kylo about the K’Aran delegation, yet?”

Artoo’s head swivels a bit and another series of beeps comes through.

“No, I do not see him every damn day. I haven’t seen him in…” Jon blinks, rubbing his eyes. “It’s been… Shit,” he checks his chronometer. “Five days. He doesn’t live with me.”

Sarcastic beeping.

“Look, that was because the First Year party was in the offing. I don’t normally see him every single day. Only Rey sees him every single day, and last I checked, I’m not her.”

Less sarcastic beeping.

“Did Threepio not brief him?”

More beeps.

“I know Threepio would have _sent_ a briefing report. I _sent_ one, too. Did no one actually, physically, go talk to him?”

Again, beeping.

“Yes, I know you’re not his bloody secretary. I’ll call C8, who is, and check with him.”

Jon’s rubbing his forehead, as he punches in C8’s comm number. “C8, uh… I’m sure this is going to sound stupid, but, has anyone actually visited Kylo to talk to him about the K’Aran delegation that’s coming the day after tomorrow.”

There’s a pause on the other side of the comm, and suddenly Jon’s feeling very cold. He doesn’t know why, but something’s _wrong._ He’s already up and heading toward Kylo’s room as C8 says, “I’m sure the Master will look at the briefings when he’s ready.”

Jon shudders. Then he finds his voice, and says, “What do you mean _look?_ ”

“Set his head so that his eyes are pointed in their directions and then read.”

Jon’s _running_ toward Kylo’s rooms, cursing the fact that he doesn’t have a direct way to get a hold of Rey. “Get me Poe’s comm, _now,_ ” he says to Artoo, who’s keeping pace with him.

A moment later, Poe’s patched on through to Jon’s wrist comm. “Jon, what’s up buddy?”

“Don’t buddy me, what’s going on with Kylo?”

He hears an amused snort followed by, “Not much, I’d assume. Sleeping and puking probably, why?”

Jon crashes to a fast stop, and drags Artoo, to the nearest empty corridor he can find. _“What?”_

“Did no one tell you?”

“Apparently, not. I’ve got a full delegation here the day after tomorrow expecting the Master to be up, on his feet, and ready to greet them, and then figure out who’s going to succeed the current leader of the K’Aran dynasty.”

He hears Poe laugh. “Not gonna happen. Hiffa lasts ten days, and he’s been down for four or five of them at most.”

Jon stuffs his fist into his mouth and _moans._

Poe’s voice gets more serious. “Wait, how bad is this?”

Jon whimpers, and then says, “It’s our first neutral space, deal broker contract. It’s worth eight billion credits over the next ten years and a _very_ good relationship with the K’Arans if they like the deal we set up. If we do this _right_ more of these fucking contracts will flow in and we’ll finally be in danger of being able to pay our fucking bills. He’s sick and none of you bastards thought to tell me?” The volume of his voice rose on each of those sentences, and he’s a hair away from yelling when he gets to the last one.

He can feel Poe bristle at that. “Hey, cool it. I do not report to you, and everyone else on Lirium is projectile puking and shitting.”

“Everyone?” Jon’s wincing, finally getting how it’s possible no one talked to him.

“Rey dodged it because she’s got all the good Force stuff, and like two of the other kids did, too. They’re taking care of the entire rest of the settlement.”

“ _Fuck.”_ That’s a whisper. Followed by, “You aren’t there?” in his normal voice.

“I was bringing back supplies when I got the ‘stay the fuck away’ message. Can’t go home for another week, at least.”

“Well, get your ass over here. I’m going to need a fucking miracle to pull this off, and maybe you’re good with them.”

Poe laughs, long and bitter. “Wrong Maji. You need Rey.”

“I don’t know where she is, and she doesn’t have a comm…”

“Give me a minute.” Nothing but dead silence and then… “She’s with him, and he’s on the _Supremacy._ Apparently, your miracle just showed up. You still want me to come?”

“Yeah. I’m going to need all the schmoozing I can get, and you’re good at that, right?”

“Lead me to whomever needs schmoozed.”

Jon can just feel Poe’s cocky grin as he said that. “Just let me know when you’re on the _Supremacy._ ”

“Same code I used last time?”

“Sure. Do you have a decent suit?”

“I think so, but from what Kylo and Rey have said, probably not according to you.”

Jon glances to Artoo, shakes his head, and says, “You will by the time you need one. Okay, Master Poe of the Maji, get ready to cover my ass, because I might need a lot of it.”

Jon can feel the smirk across the light years. “With pleasure.”

 

 

* * *

After one full hallway, Jon knows attempting to _run_ to Kylo’s rooms is just going to make him sweaty and annoyed. He can get to the tram faster, but he can’t make the tram go any faster once he’s on it, and he can’t will the elevators to go faster, so he slows down and tries to _think._

Okay, best possible outcome, Kylo’s got a light case of… what was that…

Artoo beeps, holding out a micro data pad, which is when Jon realizes he’s speaking out loud.

He glares at himself and the universe in general, grabs the data pad, and reads the pro-offered information on Hiffa Virus.

Best case scenario, he’s got a very mild case of it, is feeling refreshed by his, apparently five-ish days of napping, and can be propped in a somewhat vertical position, made to greet the K’Aran delegation, look vaguely awake as all of the parties manage to talk through their idea of what should happen, not throw up on any of the dignitaries or mess himself while doing so, and then, somehow, make some sort of pronouncement as to who should run this thing, all without… His eyes widen as he looks at how contagious Hiffa is, and how it spreads.

“Fuck!”

Jon’s rubbing his forehead. He was thinking it was, maybe, possible that they could pump enough drugs into Kylo to get him to look almost functional for this, but… he cannot possibly risk the K’Aran delegation catching this from Kylo. They could do the best mediation job in the history of mediation jobs, but if they all get the plague from coming here, no one else ever will.

Second best option. Stuff Rey into her best Lady Ren costume, somehow pry her away from Kylo and the rest of the sick Maji (He wonders idly if he’s fast enough with a blaster to set one on stun, hit her with it, and then drop her unconscious body in front of Mom and Lady Kinear and get them to _make_ her do this. He decides that’s unlikely. Maybe if he crept up on her when she was asleep, but… Not going to happen. He does call his mom and Lady Kinear and tell them to be waiting in his rooms, and to start reading up on all of his reports on the K’Aran delegation, _fast._ ) get her to listen and chat, and, if he’s very lucky, he’ll get her to stay on script, and be Lady Ren, and if he’s really, really, really fucking lucky, the K’Aran’s won’t spit in his face for promising the Master, and giving them the not quite official Lady Ren.

Absolute, cluster fuck, everything falls the fuck apart, he’s claiming that Grand Marshal title, naming himself second-in-command of the whole fucking Order, grabbing Poe and his mom, designing the most ornate Maji costume anyone has seen, putting her and the droids in charge of getting Poe into it, pumping as much alcohol into the K’Arans as they can hold, showing them a _very_ good time, and _praying_ that once it’s all done, he and Poe look enough like the guys in charge that they can pull this off.

He’s fairly sure Kinear’ll back him if he tries that play. He’s not sure if Schiff will, but at this point he doesn’t much care. Kinear’ll handle Schiff if Schiff’s a problem.

He’s got… He checks his chronometer… Forty-three hours until he’s got to put on the show of his life.

 

 

* * *

Once he gets into Kylo’s office, his shoulders slump. If he were to stack the datapads piled up on Kylo’s desk into a column, they’d be taller than he is.

There’s no possible way the man’s done a lick of work in days.

“You didn’t tell me?” He can’t even see C8, but he’s sure he’s in here, somewhere. Fucking black droid in a black room.

He sees the glow of C8’s eyes a moment before he hears footsteps and, “Tell you what, sir?”

“Cut the bantha shit. He’s sick. I know he’s sick. You know he’s sick. And because you didn’t think to tell me he’s sick, we’re about to get bit in the ass so badly we’ll walk with a limp for the rest of our lives. Supposedly Rey’s in there, go get her for me.”

“I do not know what you’re talking about, sir.”

“You bloody well do know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t go in there and get her for me, I’m going in there and getting her myself, exposure be damned.” He points at the chunk of wall that looks like every other chunk of wall in this office, but that Jon knows, if you hit it right, will slide out of the way revealing the doorway to Kylo’s rooms.

“Sir, you are not going in there without Master Ren’s express permission. Which you do not have.”

“I go in there all the time.”

“With _him._ He has not given me orders to allow you access without his permission.”

Without looking away from C8, Jon says, “Artoo, I outrank C8 by a light year, pick that fucking lock and get me in there.”

“Artoo, touch that lock and I will shut your central processing down so far you will never be brought back online again.”

Jon doesn’t need a translator to understand that Artoo finds C8’s threat significantly more intimidating than his.

 

 

“Get me General Threepio, Grand Marshall Kinear, and Grand Admiral Schiff. If you won’t bring Rey out to me, I will temporarily remove the Master as the head of the Order. So, get moving now!”

C8 stands there, impassive, arms crossed against his chest. Artoo’s visor spins, and he starts toward the door to the throne room. He’s going slowly, as if he’s waiting for Jon to change his mind.

Jon winces, looks at C8, who is not budging and that’s that. “Go Artoo—Get them— As of right now I am temporarily relieving Master Ren—“

The door slides open, and Rey’s standing there, bedraggled, exhausted, Kylo’s robe hanging off of her,  black circles etched deep under her eyes, looking like she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.

“If either of you fuckers wake him up, I’m slapping your asses into next week with my staff. Now what’s so fucking important I don’t get to have a nap?”

 

 

 

* * *

“Rey,” Jon says, voice patient. He can just feel how tired she is. How much she doesn’t want to deal with anything else. How drained. He can see it in her face, and the worry lines on her forehead and… “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You dragged me out of bed because I didn’t mention everyone is sick? Really? I’ve been _healing_ or trying at least, keeping everyone hydrated, keeping people _alive,_ and you’re miffed I didn’t send you a little note? _Back the fuck off_ , Jon, this isn’t about you!”

Tired and angry. Great. He lays as much soothing calm into his voice as he can, and begins mentally working on what he’s going to stuff Poe into in an attempts to make him look important. “No. It’s not about _me._ I’m dragging you out because no one told me, which means I didn’t know that he wasn’t in any position to deal with the K’Aran delegation, who are already in transit to us, which means it’s too late for me to reschedule this thing, and right now, I desperately need Lady Ren, because I’m guessing if you look this bad just from healing this, there’s no possible way the Master is going to show up for this thing, so…”

Rey goes pale. She was already pale, paler. “You… need Lady Ren? I… For what?”

He explains what he needs someone, who was supposed to be Kylo, but barring that, her, to do for the K’Arans.

Rey slumps into one of the seats at Kylo’s conference table. She was already feeling nervous: resigned, ready, willing, but _nervous_ about the Alderaan thing, which was, if Kylo was approaching correct, playing on the kiddie level. This does not sound like playing on the kiddie level.

This is not easing one toe into the lake to see if she likes the water, let alone if she can _swim._

 A moment later, C8’s got a tray with tea and sandwiches on it. Jon hands her one. “Come on, you’ve got to eat. First things first, you aren’t sick, right?”

“I’m not sick. Tired. Bone tired, but not sick. And… Jon, I just can’t. I’ve got to get back to Lirium. Everyone needs IVs and we’ve only got so many beds for them and…”

Jon nods. He looks sympathetic. He genuinely is sympathetic, too, but that’s not what he needs to be for this. He pulls up his inner fucking bastard and says, “Look, I know you want to be with them. I know you want to be near Kylo. I understand that. I was always a hoverer whenever Lane got sick, too. But… There’s nothing you’re doing for them that I can’t get you a pile of med droids to do. There is something you can be doing here, that literally _no one else_ in the entire Order can do, and that’s be Lady Ren. I need you to do this. The Order _needs_ you to do this. If he were the kind of man who can keep his butt in bed when something needs to be done, he would need you to do this for him.”

Rey grits her teeth. Jon doesn’t have to say it, if she doesn’t do this, he’s marching right on in there, Hiffa exposure be damned, and getting Kylo up and into something that looks vaguely functional, because they need _The Master._

Jon’s pleased to see he’s sold the lie. If she were even half as tired as she is now, he doesn’t think he could have done it, but… She’s tired, he’s intentionally making himself believe he’s going to do this, and… It’s working.

He sells it further. “Look, I know you don’t like asking for Order things, but… You need nurses. I have nurses. You are Lady Ren. I need Lady Ren. Let’s call it an even trade, and then get you dressed and out there before we fail on our first, major, _extremely lucrative_ mediation deal.”

Rey’s lips press together. She knows Kylo worries about their finances. She knows how much he wants this neutral space, meditations, deal brokering thing to work. She knows that if Jon calls out with his mind, Kylo will wake up, and then he’ll drag himself out of bed, and… “Fine. What do I need to do for this?”

Jon sags in relief. “Run in there, grab the plainest of your formal gowns, whatever underthings, shoes, and the cosmetics droid, and then come with me to my place. Mom and Lady Kinear should already be there. I’m guessing they’ll make you get a real sleep and feed you up. Poe’s already coming here. I’ll get him stocked with nurses and all the med tech you could possibly want, and he can deliver them, and then come back here so you’ve got some friendly back up for this.

“Tomorrow, intense briefings. Getting you looking right. All spiffed up. And more sleeping. You’re dead on your feet right now.

“Then Threepio will brief you more.

“Next day, it’s a gracious luncheon while you meet with the K’Aar, chat with him a bit, feel him out, see what he wants, and then talk with his grandsons, get a feel for them, too. Then all the involved sides will put forth their own plans for what’s going to happen if they win.”

“Do I have to handle the talks?”

Jon shakes his head. “Just the one on one chats with the K’Aar and his grandsons. You just have to be there for the rest of them. We’ve got someone who specialize in K’Aran culture to listen, ask questions, and see what the ‘best’ answer may be. Once the talking is done, they’ll ‘advise’ you on the next step, and then you’ll sit at the head of the table, and talk with them about what you’d like to see happen next.

“Eventually, after you listen some more to everyone else, you’ll chat again with each grandson, and then come up with ‘The Order’s Proposed Solution.’ If they don’t take it, we get paid for our time and hospitality. If they do take it, we get a ten year contract to enforce our solution and keep the peace in the K’Aran system.”

Rey nods, slowly. Then she heads into their rooms, where Kylo is napping. She pets his hair back, kisses his forehead, and gathers her things. “So much for that nap.” He’s far enough asleep; he doesn’t stir.

Then she’s in his office with Jon.

 

 

* * *

As they’re walking toward the elevator, Jon says, “How bad is it?”

“It’s third shift and he’s asleep. Fever’s lower, but not broken. And he hasn’t had an actual meal in days. It’s Hiffa, which is beyond nasty, and if we didn’t live in a galaxy with IV fluid and nutrient distribution, and good water sanitation, it’d be a population killer.”

Jon nods. “How bad are you?”

She shrugs. “I’m tired. I’m annoyed. I don’t want to be doing anything other cuddling with Kylo and setting up an experimental Force healing technique, which, if Xanth is right, might be the key to most of my loves getting up and feeling better, but I won’t be doing it because this monstrosity just landed in my lap.”

Jon winces. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t… If it weren’t a huge deal…”

“Yeah. I know. When you go to the medbay to get those nurses, have them check you for it. Hopefully you didn’t just get it off of me, but…”

He waves that off. “I don’t get sick.” Not strictly true, but, generally speaking unless he’s being appallingly stupid, he doesn’t get sick. Assuming he’s good with washing his hands and not eating/drinking from the sick person’s cup, he doesn’t get sick. For example, when various colds and flus had been going around, he didn’t catch them. “Never have. Don’t think I’m going to start today.”

“Lucky you.”

“Lucky us. You want me to remind Poe not to actually get on planet when he drops the med-droids and equipment off?”

Rey looks listless, and Jon’s really starting to wonder if she’s right about not being sick, but… Well, given what the symptoms are… Tired. She’s probably just tired. “That’d be good.”

“We can send Artoo to oversee getting everything set up. If you want, you can record your ideas about the Force healing technique, see if you can get it working from afar.”

“Yeah, fine.” She looks disheartened and flat as they’re walking along, and Jon sincerely hopes a nap and food will help, a lot.

“When did you eat last? A real meal. Not a cookie from C8.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Three cycles.”

“Three days?” Jon’s eyes are wide.

“No… Take the kids to the IVs, five… uh, six now, open, so, that’s…” She pauses. “Uh… about four hours to cycle through all of them. Get them all back home. Make sure the healthy ones eat and rest. Mop up, comfort, make sure everyone is in one piece. Come here, cuddle with Kylo. Go home, take the kids to the IVs, make sure the ones not on the IVs are more or less okay, repeat cleaning and nursing work, come back here, cuddle with Kylo…”

“Got it. Okay, when we get to my rooms, my mom and Lady Kinear are going to be in there. I’m going to meet with them, and I think you’re just getting a good long shower,” which is a polite way of saying that he’d rather prefer to never smell anything like the Hiffa lingering on her skin again, “and then into bed for a good long sleep.”

“Where will you sleep?”

“I’ve kipped out on my sofa more nights than I can count. Another one won’t hurt.” This also isn’t strictly true. He did sleep on that sofa for more than a year after Lane died, because he just _couldn’t_ in the bed they shared. It’s also too short for him, not firm enough, and when he wakes up his back and neck will hurt, but if he says that to her, she’ll get weird about sleeping in his bed, and… Nope. They aren’t going there.

“Fine,” she nods absently. As they walk, Jon starts to do what he does, fix things. He’s on the comm with Poe, getting him up to date, and ready to move an entire medical ward to Lirium if need be. He’s relaying the orders to get that medical ward ready to move, fast. (A few people in the Med Division give him some static, but when he reminds them of who he is, and that this is for _Lady Ren_ those droids and supplies _move._ )

They’re on the tram, and he’s talking to Threepio about getting a streamlined version of the cheat sheet he’d laid on Kylo for Rey.

She’s not really paying attention, but she does half catch something like, “Mistress Rey is handling this?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there at once.”

“At once, she’s getting a good eight hours of sleep and at least two meals. Just get it all collected as fast as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

* * *

As they stand outside of Jon’s door, two sets of expectations are about to go crashing into reality.

The first is Rey’s. She expects to enter that door, try to wave off the older ladies, get a shower, and then collapse until they need to dress her up, all the while trying to _not_ have a minor mental breakdown at having to be, on her own, for very high stakes, _Lady Ren._

The second is Jon’s, who grew up with one of these women, and is expecting a lot of what he’d call ‘fussing’ when he was younger. Rey’s about to get fussed-over in a way she’s likely never been fussed-over before. And he’s not sure if she’ll like it or if it’ll scare her.

He opens the door, and Rey immediately gets hit with two older woman, both of whom have nursed a collection of sick children, parents, and husbands over the years, both of whom are aware of the fact that she’s an orphan who’s likely never been properly mothered herself, and both of whom are deeply invested in making sure that the Court of Ren will succeed well and long, because that’s the key to them and theirs succeeding well and long, and that she’s the current piece of the puzzle necessary to pull it all together.

“Oh, Rey, you look ready to drop,” Mirina says, putting an arm around Rey, ushering her to the kitchen table, as Ellie’s getting the tea and snacks ready to go.

“Sit down, sit. You can’t take care of the rest of them this tired,” and then there’s tea in her hands, and a plate with biscuits and fruit in front of her, a warm blanket around her shoulders, and Ellie is glaring at Jon, like he somehow fucked something up, but he can’t for the life of him think of what it could possibly be.

 

 

He doesn’t have to wait long to find out what, though.

“Do you mean to tell me, Jonathan Frakes, that you don’t have a good enough ear in his rooms to know when he’s sick?”

Jon blinks. He’s never been scolded for inadequate spying before.

His mom is shaking her head like he’s some sort of massive failure, and then says, “I know I taught you better than that!”

“What?” Jon’s thinking it, but Rey’s the one who says it.

“Honey… That’s his job. He can’t be a good second-in-command if things like this sneak up and bite him.” Ellie glares at Jon again. She’s got an arm around Rey, and is gently stroking her back, and Rey’s got wide eyes and doesn’t know what to do with this, and Jon’s actually a bit surprised, too. Yes, the fussing-over all went according to script, the dressing down for inadequate spying _isn’t._

“I’m… sorry?” He tries, hoping that’ll calm things down. “I… uh… didn’t think bugging your room was appropriate?”

Mirina shakes her head again, but she does pass him a cup of tea, and it is the way he likes it. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“I’d… appreciate it if you didn’t,” Rey says, quietly. And as soon as she does, she knows exactly why this was set up this way, and then she glares at the ladies. “I’ll just tell him next time. I’ve been busy, you know?”

Ellie smiles a bit. “It genuinely is his job to know every major and minor thing going on with both of you as far as it may impact his job. He can’t properly diplomat if things like this come sneaking up at him. That said, it’s your job to use the tools at your disposal, one of which happens to be Jon. You should never be this tired. And, if you had gotten a hold of him, I’m certain he’d have had all the medical staff you could have possibly wanted at your disposal in less than an hour.”

Jon nods, emphatically.

“Are you genuinely trying to nurse twenty-five people? By yourself?” Mirina asks.

Rey sips the tea, and then eats a biscuit. She’s so tired, but hungry now, too. “Not just by myself. Xanth, Savarah, and Cassie are helping.”

“Savarah’s fifteen, right?” Jon supplies. “And the oldest of the three of them.”

Now she’s glaring at him. But he doesn’t care. If this can move the situation so that Rey gets the help she needs, and they don’t end up in a situation like this again, he’s comfortable with tattling on her.

Both Ellie and Mirina shake their heads. “Those poor children. We are sending a full medical group to them, aren’t we Jon?”

Jon’s not sure about _we,_ but the main point stands. “Done, Mom. Rey’s friend Poe is picking them up as soon as they’re ready to go.”

“Good.”

“I do have a medical droid at our settlement. It’s not _just_ me and the kids.”

“One droid for twenty-two people, all of whom are sick?” Ellie says. “That’s what Pat’s first sky command looked like, and it was fine, until they were under attack and more than three people were hurt at once. Then it was a disaster. There’s a reason why all of the Stormtroopers are trained in basic first aid and triage skills, and every tech droid on these ships can jackleg medic if need be.”

Rey hadn’t known that. “All of them?”

“If the attack is bad enough, the codes are in place to get a roughly 1:2 ratio of care givers to people needing care,” Ellie says. That idea wasn’t Pat’s, but he championed it and made sure it went live in the Empire and then over to the First Order. One med droid is more than sufficient most of the time. Until, of course, you’re taking fire and you’ve got two people bleeding out and a third one slipping into shock, and the humans who are trained in first aid are also the humans in charge of the maneuvers that make sure that none of the rest of your ship gets shot to pieces.

Jon winces. “You don’t want to see what happens if those codes go live, though. Most of the tech droids are set to shoot you up with enough morph that you won’t care what comes next, diagnose the issues, cut off anything they can’t immediately fix, cauterize any wounds, get you horizontal and warm so you don’t slip into shock, and add you to the triage queue so that the most damaged people get attention from the real medics, first. The only thing they know how to do is immediately stabilize someone so they don’t die waiting for a real medic.” 

Rey looks at him curiously. “Were you…”

He looks away. He really doesn’t like thinking about those days. He likes talking about them less, but… “We’re all trained in first, and likely second, aid. And I’m not saying I’m a good medic or anything, but I at least know not to cut an arm off just because it’s broken.”

All three of the ladies wince.

Jon looks at his tea, gets up, grabs a bottle, and pours a shot into it, then a bit more. Rey watches him do it, and for the first time it occurs to her that he drinks a lot more than everyone else she knows, save Poe. And it occurs to her that he’s seen a lot more than everyone else she knows, save Poe.

His eyes meet hers, and she can almost feel him daring her to mention how much he drinks. She doesn’t. That’s not for today or tomorrow or… He’s not her parents, and she doesn’t remember them, or what they did to her well enough to call it into play. On top of that, she’s got no… anything… for him. No answers, no real sense of if this is a problem or… Other than right now, he’s feeling defensive about it, but…

Whatever this is, it’s not for today.

Rey eats another biscuit, and then glances at Ellie and Mirina. “Now what?”

“Resting, for you,” Ellie says. “Let me guess, if left to your own devices, you’d spend all your time hovering near Kylo, not sleeping properly, trying to make him feel better. But you’ve got the sick kids, too, so instead of getting the rest you need, you’re trying to take care of everyone.”

Rey half nods, and eats another biscuit.

Mirina glances to the bag Rey set down when she came in. “Is your dress in there?”

“Yes.”

“Good, we’ll get you set for… day after tomorrow, correct?”

Jon nods. “What do you know about the K’Arans?”

“Very little. They’re outside my sphere,” Mirina replies.

Ellie shakes her head. “I know they exist. They were tangentially part of the Empire, and the Old Republic before that, but between being far enough out on the Rim to make getting to them long and tedious, and keeping themselves to themselves, I don’t know much beyond that. But while you sleep, we’ll read. And talk. And _learn._ Come the day after tomorrow, you’ll be ready.”

And, almost magically, as Ellie says _sleep_ Rey feels her eyes drooping. A moment after that, Ellie’s got an arm around her, is gently escorting her to Jon’s room, and then tucking her into bed.

And for the first time that Rey can ever recall, someone snugs the blankets around her, pets her hair, kisses her forehead, and quietly shuts off the lights and door for her.

And then she’s asleep.

 

 

* * *

“What did you put in her tea?” Jon asks.

“Nothing nearly as strong as what you put in yours. The poor girl’s exhausted, between the chamomile, sleep wort, and not having to be in charge for a few hours, she was done for,” Ellie says. “Now, how could you have possibly not known?”

Jon rolls his eyes. “I just didn’t. Unlike them, I’m not actually capable of reading minds, and no one told me.”

“Well, that needs to be rectified at once. Schiff knew within minutes of Kylo coming down with his cold. Pat had the intel an hour after that. C8 produces daily briefings on what he’s doing, and you should absolutely be getting them.”

Jon rolls his eyes. The downside of a droid like C8 is, that unless Kylo specifically tells him something, he won’t deviate from his programming, and… Jon’s official rank is still Lt. Colonel, which means C8’s going to give him exactly _nothing_. He can just feel it. Kylo’s so used to depending on him, that it never occurred to him that he’d have to _tell_ C8 to give him access. Because with mind-readers, who spend a lot of time with other mind-readers, remembering they have to explicitly,  _verbally,_ communicate things can be iffy.

However, unlike C8, Kinear and Schiff bloody well know who he is and what he does and why he’s still at Lt. Colonel. “Then why didn’t _you_ tell me?” Jon says, pointedly, shooting back his tea.

Ellie waves that away. “It never even threatened to occur to any of us that you weren’t in the know. As soon as Kylo’s capable of giving an order again, he needs to make sure that you are in the loop. No, you don’t have to literally bug his rooms,” Ellie and Mirina share a look that Jon understands as _but you bloody well should, as well as any other room anyone who’s of any value is in,_ “but you do need a direct line to anything and everything C8 knows. You should be getting daily updates on what Kylo is doing. And, like with Pat, C8 should know the only things he can’t tell you are things he’s specifically been ordered not to tell you.”

“Fine. As soon as he’s fit for human company again we’ll get those orders in place.”

“What’s he down with?” Mirina asks.

“Hiffa.”

The ladies wince.

Ellie half inclines her head. “That explains the smell. We’ll make sure to get the janitorial staff in here, as well as laundry as soon as she’s awake.”

“Yes, I was hoping to get her into my shower before you stuck her in my bed.” Jon’s voice is beyond dry and into arid as he says that.

“It’s just a mattress, Jon, we can get you a new one if they can’t get the smell out,” Mirina says.

Jon winces at that idea. “Says the woman who is still sleeping in the same bed she shared with my father.”

“But not the same mattress. Good, gods, love, it’s been thirty-three years.”

“I _know._ ”

Ellie’s voice is gentle as she says, “They’ll get it cleaned. You won’t have to let go of it, not if you don’t want to.” She shakes her head a bit. “Never Hiffa, we’ve avoided that, but… Over the years, the kids brought home a lot of nasty crud, and… Blanie’s cleaning enzyme, it’ll take any stain, any scent off of anything. We used to go through it by the liter.”

Jon sighs at that, too. He supposes he can’t, not really, still smell Lane in their bed. It’s been more than two years, and it’s not like the sheets and blankets and pillowcases haven’t been washed, a lot, in that time. Still…

Mirina squeezes his hand gently. He feels her finger brush over his wedding ring. “Okay, show us the dress and tell us about what our girl’s going to have to do.”

Jon pours himself another drink, this one almost entirely tea, pulls out Rey’s dress, and starts to explain.

 

 

* * *

“So that’s the short version. It’s a culture that worships strength and power, consider conspicuous wealth a sign of both, and they’re on the verge of ripping apart. We’ve got strength and power coming out our ears, so the K’Aar is looking to hire ours until whichever grandson grows up enough that he won’t need us as a crutch any longer.”

The ladies nod.

“So, you’re saying Kylo was literally perfect for the job?” Mirina says. Say whatever you can or will about the Great Black Urus, he’s basically the physical embodiment of human strength and power, sitting in the middle of the largest battleship in the galaxy, with the most impressive fleet flying around it, and all of it is at his command.

Jon cocks his head and sips his tea. “Basically. Except, of course, apparently, he’s not able to kill a virus at a whim, so he’s down for the next five or six days, and if we could get him up and talking, he’ll poison anyone who gets near him, so…”

“So, absolutely no Kylo for this,” Ellie finishes.

“I’m fairly certain he’s not even aware of the fact Rey’s not in his room anymore, and for that matter, I’m going to tell her to make sure C8 doesn’t remind him that this is supposed to happen if he wakes up, because the last thing any of us want to do is to try and stuff his fever-blasted self back into his room before he gets everyone else sick.”

“Sounds sensible,” Mirina says. “Nothing like a nasty stomach bug to turn the tides against you.”

“Indeed,” Ellie says.

Jon’s _certain_ there’s a story behind that, but he’s also certain that he doesn’t want to know what it is, not right now.

“So, I’ve got to whip up something that looks like we’re still in charge and in power and functional. I’m fairly sure I _can_ pull that off. The question is, will Grand—“ Fuck it, he’s talking to the man’s wife, “Pat or Grand Admiral Schiff back me on this plan?”

Ellie smirks a bit. “Josh. The Grand Admiral’s name is Josh, and if they didn’t think that you were capable of joining them in the Grand Marshall’s ranks you’d be too dead to care. Neither of them is stupid or tolerant of incompetents risking their personal survival.”

Mirinia bristles a bit at that, but she doesn’t say anything. Jon blinks. She didn’t say anything because she knows that’s how the game is played at this level, too. As long as he’s good for the Order, and them, he’ll flourish. And as soon as he’s not…

That sends a chill down his spine. As a Lt. Colonel, as a _real_ Lt. Colonel, he’s below notice. It doesn’t much matter what he does, and who he’s friends with, and how he plays the game, because he’s just too little to be worth noticing.

As the potential third in the second highest rung of the Order…

He swallows.

Mirina pats his hand. “There’s a code, love. And men like Josh and Pat play by it. That’s how all the Imperials used to play the game. As long as your service record was good, your family would always be safe. But… If you became a problem, you wouldn’t be one for long.” She glances at his wedding picture. “That’s a big part of eventually warming up to Lane. He knew the rules and played by them. I mean… you knew. You had to _know._ ”

He knew. But there’s knowing, and there’s _knowing_ and he _knew,_ sort of. His previous commanding officer didn’t just bugger off to parts unknown. He became a problem. A personal problem, for Jon, and a professional one for Lane, so Lane killed him, and that was that. And no one, not even Jon Frakes, blinked at it, because that’s the way things worked.

So, yes, he _knew._ But there’s also the moment when you realize that you personally can sign an order, and people will, literally, die because of it. And other people will, literally, kill because of it.

Or that, if you pull a blaster on someone, and use it on them, the only thing you’ll have to do after is fill out some paperwork explaining why you pulled that blaster and used it.

And _no one_ thinks that’s remotely inappropriate.

And that’s a _lot_ to take in, because while it’s true that people have died because of decisions Jon has made (like slightly thinning down the armor plate so he could save a few credits per unit there, and then shift those credits into a slightly better waste disposal system in the Stormtrooper armor) it’s also true that he’s never, actually, personally, killed anyone before.

And he was rather hoping not to ever change that.

And now… Both of the ladies sitting with him are saying, something, likely that he should be paying attention to, but…

At some point, he’ll have to decide what he’s willing to do, personally, to defend himself, his position here, and the Order as a whole.

He takes another drink of his tea.

But not today. 

 

 

* * *

“Okay, med center has been delivered, now what?” Poe’s voice on Jon’s comm jerks him out of his planning session with his mother and Ellie.

“Do you know your way around the _Supremacy?_ ”

“Not even remotely.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Great. Get back here, stuff your ship somewhere. Once you know your landing coordinates, let me know, and I’ll make sure Artoo—“

“Who is on a different planet, overseeing setting up the fanciest medical bay I’ve ever heard of, let alone seen.”

“Fuck…” Jon’s head is in his hands.

His mom gently strokes his wrist. She mouths to him. “Go get him.”

“Just let me know when you’ve got your landing assignment; I’ll come find you.”

“You have time for that?”

“My current second-in-command seems to think so.”

Mirina smirks a bit at that, as she threads her needle and begins to lay down another line of embroidery to the gown she’s got in her hands. Apparently, the K’Aran like _ornate._ She’s not going to try to put Rey into something that looks K’Aran, just something that looks like they might have similar values.

Which means she’s sewing for her life. Embroidering in thread of platinum and adding seed pearls and tiny emeralds to what would otherwise be a fairly plain dove gray dress. Once she’s got the first motif done, though, the droids will be able to copy it along the hem and sleeves of the gown. Mirina Frakes is an amazing embroiderer, fast as fast can be, but she can still only do about two square centimeters an hour. Once this gets to the droids, they’ll get up to ten centimeters per hour, per droid, and Jon’s going to stuff every droid he can fit around this dress.

“All right. I’ll hit the landing queue in about an hour. Anything else?” Poe asks.

“Yeah. I’m sending you a crash course of what we’re supposed to be doing, who we’re meeting, and why.”

“Great. Studying.” It’s clear from his voice that book work was never Poe’s favorite thing.

“Think of it as deep background on a security case.”

“Ah. All right. See you soon.”

Ellie and Mirina both look at Jon, curious as to whom he’s been talking to.

Mirina’s the one who asks. “So, he’s _Rey’s friend?_ ”

Jon rubs his lips together. He’s sure Ellie will recognize the name. He’s not sure if his mother will. “Yeah. You know Rey’s Maji-thing?”

They nod.

“Master Poe Dameron of the Maji. He’s her… well, me, I guess.”

Ellie’s face is perfect. There’s not a single tell on it. But he just _knows_ that she knows who Poe is. His mother, fortunately, doesn’t. The last thing he needs right now is for her to have a melt down over the second-highest-ranked member of the Resistance joining in on this dance.

Which is also making him wonder why he’s invited him to the dance, too, but…

Well, fuck, if they’re moving to the Order of the Maji, and right now they’re a tad light on Order, he might as well fill his ranks with Maji.

Which is as deeply as he’s going to think about this right now, as he’s working on sketching out something that’ll make Poe looks like he belongs in the top diplomatic ranks of what will eventually be a galaxy-spanning organization in the peace, prosperity, and basic sentient dignity business.

(And if said outfit is doing nice things for Poe’s hips and ass, well, he is only human.)

 

 

* * *

It takes Jon a moment to find Poe amid all of the _stuff_ in the… It’s a loading bay… He’s shaking his head. “Remind me to find you a better place to land.”

“Kylo said something like that, too.” He grins at Jon. “You look fried. So, what am I gearing up to swoop in at the last minute and save?”

Jon turns and nods them toward the exit, where they can catch a tram, and elevator, another tram, and… “The size of this place is stupid.”

Poe shrugs. “It’s a city.”

“Yes, but that’s remarkably inconvenient when you need it to be a palace.”

“Ah…” He nods. “Fried… huh?”

“Uh…” Jon blinks. He hasn’t answered Poe’s question. “Fried. So, you do a lot of swooping in and saving at the last minute?”

Poe thinks about it, decides _not_ mentioning Starkiller is a good plan, and responds with, “Something of a specialty of mine. So…”

“Okay, here’s the really sort version—“

“Are you just going to tell me what I read in your write up?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, not what I’m looking for. I already read it, and just because I don’t enjoy studying doesn’t mean I’m bad at it. What the hell do you expect _me_ to do?”

Jon blinks. “Right. Uh… Put on whatever the hell outfit I come up with for you, show the fuck up, act charming, make people want to be here, make them feel like there’s no problem we can’t solve, and help keep Rey comfortable and calm, because she’s going to a much better job of Lady Renning if she feels like a friendly face or two, besides mine, is cheering her on.”

“I can do that.”

“Good.”

They walk a few more steps before Poe says, “Do you need my measurements or something?”

Jon laughs and laughs and laughs at that.

 

 

* * *

Poe has a few seconds to look around Jon’s apartment before the introductions begin. It’s a _nice_ place. The colors are pleasant, well-coordinated. Everything is tidy. Jon appears to have a few pet fish flitting around in a pristinely kept bowl. And…

Poe mentally grins. Pictures. Of Jon and an attractive man. But Jon has a _friend._ Who is female… So… Jon’s pulling off his gloves, and… He does have a marriage band. Poe didn’t imagine that the first time… So, either he and his husband are game to play with others, or his husband is no longer in the metaphorical… Poe glances to what is likely a wedding picture on the wall… if not literal, picture.

Interesting.

He’d been wondering if Jon had been looking him over a bit more carefully than was strictly business-like during their previous meetings. He didn’t do anything… flirty, or express anything Poe would consider a direct sign of interest, but… He did _look,_ probably _._ Granted, Poe’s more than used to catching the quick, discreet, look a man flashes when he's not sure the attention is welcome.

Then Jon speaks, “Poe, this is my mother, Mirina Frakes, and Lady Ellie Kinear. My secret weapons in the diplomacy department.”

Poe’s beyond amused to see that he’s meeting Jon’s mom, though he’s also curious to get to interact with an… Imperial. He’s heard about Ellie, so he knows she’s something of a big deal, and he’s not sure if she’s an Imperial so much as... Well, he doesn’t know. She pre-and post-dates the Empire, so… A survivor. She’s a survivor, and in general, he’s always gotten on well with survivors. They tend to recognize each other, and appreciate it, even if they aren’t all of the same stripe when it comes to anything else.

That’s part of what he liked so much about Leia.

He takes Mirina’s hand first, gently kisses the back of it, looks her in the eyes with a big grin, “Charmed, ma’am. This is my first time actually working with your son, and I’m looking forward to it.”

He sees Mirina just _look_ at Jon, and then lick her lips, smile at Poe, and say, “Charmed, as well. Thank you. And what is it you intend to do for my son?”

“Whatever he needs me to.” Jon is behind Poe, so Poe doesn’t see him swallow hard at that, or bite his lip, or _not_ blush, but he feels it.

 

 

He absolutely sees Ellie, who is in front of him, smirk at it. He steps over, and again takes her hand, and kisses the back of it, “Lady Kinear.” He flashes her the same grin. “I understand we’re in a time crunch and need a bit of daring-do to whip a miracle out of the ethers. Fortunately, that’s my specialty.”

And Ellie, knowing, likely in more detail than Poe himself does (After all, he _lived_ it. He didn’t read the in-depth move by move reports on it after.) exactly what sort of last minute daring-do he’s been able to whip out, nods slowly, and says, “You’ll do.”

Mirina raises an eyebrow at that. “Are the Maji in the miracle business?”

“Nope. But if needs be, we’ll make one.” He’s still giving her his best, take-on-all-comers (or cocky-asshole) grin. 

Jon smiles at him. And Poe wonders if that smile is a touch warmer than some of his previous ones, and then hands over two datapads.

“Miracle step one. K’Oanan and K’Ahuana. Identical twin boys, who are so identical that no one is entirely sure which one is the oldest any longer. Apparently, back when they were babies, a nanny stuck both of them in the bath at the same time, and, well, no clothing, and… And then when they were little, they’d get naked and pretend to be each other, and...”

“And no one’s sure which one was actually born which any longer,” Poe says.

“Exactly,” Jon replies. “These are the files the K’Arans sent to us. The ones that _aren’t_ supposed to get onto our servers. These are the completely non-official, will be denounced if we leak them, _internal_ assessments of both boys, written, from what I can tell, though, of course, there are no names on this, by the boys’—“

“’Boys,’ are we talking like, ten-year-olds?” Poe asks.

“Technically, they’re young men,” Ellie adds. “Twenty-two-years old.”

Poe nods. “Okay. Old enough they might pull this off. Young enough no one past thirty is comfortable with it.”

That gets the other three, all past thirty, nodding.

Jon taps the datapad. “We think this report was written by their grandfather. The K’Aar of the K’Arans. Probably bits and pieces have been added by the other highest warlords. But this is the most… uncensored… report we’re going to get on them, and I want you to know it inside out.”

Poe takes the datapad. “Okay. And what am I going to do with this once I know it inside out?”

“I’m thinking I’ll give the boys to you, and then set Rey on the K’Aar. We’ve got a meet and greet period where Kylo was _supposed_ to meet with the K’Aar, then talk with him about what he wanted out of this, get a feel for what’s in that pad and what’s not, and then he’d spend some time with each of the boys, get more of a feel for what they’d do and who they are, and discreetly hovering around the edges are our diplomacy wonks and Threepio, who really have studied up on this, also watching and seeing, and then _they’d_ come up with a plan, and Kylo’d either accept it and give it to the K’Aar, or reject it and offer up his own ideas.”

“Okay, divide and conquer.” Poe can handle that. “Rey can lay down her Force and, with any luck, soothe what’s likely to be a somewhat miffed head of state, who if we’re lucky, won’t consider it a mortal insult that instead of getting a meeting with Kylo, we’re fobbing him off on Rey and I.”

“Exactly.” Jon nods. “No one cares much if the boys like us. It’d be nice, because we’re attempting to get something like friendly relationships with other nations, but it won’t be the end of the Order if they don’t take a shine to you. It will be an issue if the K’Aar thinks we’re being rude to him.”

“All right. More studying.” Poe looks around. Ellie is in one of Jon’s comfy chairs, a cup of tea by her side, and a collection of similar datapads nearby. Mirina is on the sofa, a… lot of fabric… Poe assumes it’s a dress, but he’s not entirely sure, in her lap, she appears to be sewing.

Jon’s sitting at his… Poe’s never seen one before, but he’s heard of them. It’s an actual drawing board, a slanted desk with a light over it. There’s a glass of… it’s clear, about two centimeters full, and he’d bet it’s vodka, but he doesn’t know it is, resting on a small shelf at the bottom.

“What are you doing?” Poe asks.

“Right now, trying to make Kylo’s not-a-throne room look ready for them, and reconfiguring it so that I can stick Rey in the middle of it and have all of them look at her and see _the_ Empress.”

Poe chuckles a bit. “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks.”

Poe glances around a bit more. He set the datapad down on the kitchen table. “Uh… Food?” It's well past the time he'd normally eat supper, and going past all the restaurants in the market section of the F-Deck did exactly nothing to take his mind off his stomach.

Jon blinks, “Oh, uh… Right.” He taps his comm. “Kitchen services, this is Lt. Colonel Frakes.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I need an order of…” He glances to Poe, who blinks. “Whatever you like,” Jon says to him.

“Uh… Rugarian noodles and a brown ale?”

“Rugarian noodles and a brown ale.”

“Yes, sir. Do you want the noodles hot, medium, or mild? What temperature on the brown ale?”

Poe blinks. He’s used to military cuisine that comes in pre-fab bricks and you eat it by spraying it with water to hydrate it. “Medium. Room temperature.”

“Medium. Room temperature.”

“Done, sir. We’ll have it up in about twenty minutes.”

“Good. Frakes out.”

Poe’s still staring at him. “That’s how it works?”

“For food. For officers. Enlisted eat in one of the messes or in one of the restaurants/booths or cafes on the C, D, or E decks. We’re on the F-deck here, and if you wanted to take a walk, there’s a market section about half a klick down the hall to the right, or two and a half, to the left, and there are restaurants and cafes there, too.”

Poe blinks again. “Someone will just bring you the food?”

“Thing. Something. If I’d asked for a specific dish from a particular restaurant, something would deliver it, and charge my account. With the exception of the few head and sous chefs, everyone else in the kitchens or on food delivery is a droid. The food supply is too valuable and vulnerable to leave to humans.”

“Poisons?” Poe asks. “We used to… Uh…” He glances at Mirina and Ellie. Imperials… First Order… He licks his lips. “When I was in security, one of my jobs was to come up with ways that my people could be compromised. Making sure the kitchens were secure was first on the list of any meeting with food.”

Jon smirks slightly. He knows what Commander Dameron of the Resistance was likely thinking. “Yes, avoiding poisons, but also avoiding slips in basic hygiene. Droids don’t forget to wash their hands. They don’t sneeze.”

Poe smirks back at him. “They don’t catch Hiffa virus, and then give it to all their buddies the first day they get home when they’re all in the kitchen processing the food they brought home.”

Jon raises an eyebrow at Poe, sitting a little closer to him. “Is that what happened?”

Poe nods. “Chewie and Finn got home, and apparently Finn’d been exposed. The two of them had a full ship of fresh produce, so they lug it into the kitchen, along with the rest of the settlement, so they’re all in there for _six_ hours, and…”

Jon’s nodding. “And by the end of the night everyone but Rey and the lightlings are sick? You don’t have air cycling in your buildings, do you?”

“Exactly, almost. Chewie’s got Paige, and he’s making sure she stays okay. But everyone else is down. And no. You don’t put air cycling on buildings on a planet with a hospitable climate. Not if you’re watching your credits.”

“Paige didn’t get it?”

“She got such a little dose Rey could take care of it, but she was it. Everyone else had too much.”

“And you just happened to be out of town.”

“Second luckiest damn day of my life, apparently.”

Jon decides to push it. “What was the first?”

Poe grins. It’s clear he’s circling through a collection of possible responses to that, and it’s also clear that _none_ of them are true, but before he comes up with something, probably along the lines of, _The day I met you,_ Mirina says, “A little less flirting, a little more work.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Yes, _Mom._ ” He turns his attention back to Poe. “Anyway, food’ll be here soon. Make yourself comfortable, and figure out how to gladhand two princelings in such a way that you’ll have a good idea of who they really are when you’re done.”

 

* * *

The noodles are good. Surprisingly good. Stupidly good. No one outside of the Rugrath system has any right making these noodles these well. And yet…

Poe’s reading. He’s nursing his ale. He’s sitting, leaning back, comfortable… And… well, confused.

He doesn’t want it to show, but…

This is _not_ what he thought the _Supremacy_ was supposed to be like.

He’s heard about Kylo’s all black rooms. And, of course there are the chunks he’s seen. Well, obviously an _interrogation_ room, a flight deck, or a loading bay aren’t going to be particularly lush, but given how austere they were, he didn’t think the F-Deck, let alone comfortable little flats like this, could possibly be a thing.

He’s kind of annoyed that this bit is not only nicer than anything the Resistance had, but it’s also on par with any New Republic base he was ever on.

And he can comfort himself with the fact that it’s nicer than Resistance bases by the fact that Resistance bases were funded by charity and the personal funds of the higher ups, and in many cases the not-so-high-ups.

But, the New Republic… He sips his ale. He was an officer in the New Republic. He was on security for a _Senator._ He doesn’t remember food delivery on tap. And he knows for a fact that a lot of the Senate employed their own, personal, loyal kitchen staffs because they didn’t necessarily trust anyone else to cook for them.

Not an unwise decision.

After all, it’s not like they didn’t take advantage of the laxity of the occasional kitchen worker to make sure the right, or wrong, person didn’t go where they were or weren’t supposed to go. Or vote in certain things. Or…

He takes another sip. What’s the line? _A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?_ Something like that.

Still, it does irk him a bit that “Evil Inc.” apparently does a better job of taking care of its people than the “Good Guys.”

He thinks about that for a moment, and about Finn’s stories. Apparently, “Evil Inc.” does a better job taking care of its _officers_ than the “Good Guys.”

That gets a sigh. That’s likely part of how “Evil Inc.” gets to stay in business. Keep the officers happy, and they’ve got a vested interest in keeping the men in line, and the “Good Guys” from winning.

He takes another sip of his ale, and glances around the room. Ellie’s reading. Mirina is sewing. Occasionally they say something to each other. He can, almost, he’s not sure if this is genuine, or if he just knows she’s there, so he’s imagining it, feel Rey sleeping. Jon’s back to him, at the drawing board, working on something, slowly, maybe one sip every ten minutes, going through that glass of clear liquid, which, given how he’s drinking it, definitely isn’t water.

That’s the point of being here, right? The hope that this isn’t, and won’t be, “Evil Inc.” any longer. The prayer that he’s thrown in with the right side, and…

He glances at the datapad in front of him, with all of the boys’ secrets. They’d likely die if they knew how closely they were being watched.

Or, maybe, since they’ve been watched like this their whole lives, they’re used to it.

This far into the report he’s got one of the two he’s leaning toward, but… He gets the sense the guy who wrote the report may also be leaning in that direction. Which might be another reason to bring them in. Get an impartial opinion.

He sighs and takes another drink. He rubs his Maji pendent between his thumb and forefinger. He can’t fix the galaxy, but maybe, right here, right now, in this one issue, he can bring things a bit closer to balance.

And that’s got to be worth something, right?


	16. The Rise of Lady Ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's another long one this week. With the pictures, I think we're at more than 40 pages... I hope you all enjoy!

 

2/5/2

 

Rey wakes up alone, disoriented, in a bed she doesn’t know, that smells like a man who isn’t Kylo, and for a full minute she goes dead still, eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep, listening carefully, trying to figure out what’s going on, hoping that something hasn’t gone horribly wrong.

Nothing. No sounds at all. Except… Humming. Right, humming, because she’s on the _Supremacy._ Which has a constant low-grade hum, because it’s a moving ship.

Jon’s room. She sits up. That’s why there are things like colors, and the bed is narrower, and it smells like… she’s not sure. Cologne. That’s in there, and… Jon… and… male… she just doesn’t know what the rest of it is, but it’s a scent she knows is _male_. Very much not their room at home, and not Kylo’s room here.

 _Tired_ must have been an understatement if it took her that long to remember where she was, and why.

She glances at the chrono. _Tired_ must have also been an understatement, in that it’s ten hours later, and all she wants to do is roll over and go back to sleep.

Ten hours… So… First shift, then. It’s the middle of the night. Likely why she’s not hearing any voices. She gets up, tucks the blanket back into place, and puts her shoes on. The door opens with a near silent swoosh, and in the main room she finds Poe on the sofa, snoring slightly, and Jon hunched over his drawing table, working on something.

 

 

“Hey,” she says, voice quiet.

“Hey back,” he keeps his voice quiet, too. “Good nap?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I think I need another one.”

He smiles at that and nods back to the bed. “You’re welcome to it.”

She shakes her head. “Nah. I’ve got to go home, check in on everyone, see if Xanth and Critt have figured out a way to kick Hiffa in the butt.”

Jon raises an eyebrow at that. “You can’t just… magick it away? No, of course not, if you could, Kylo wouldn’t be in bed.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I tried. Made everyone I tried on worse.”

Jon winces.

“But Xanth might have a plan, and if he and Critt can work it, that’ll be much more effective than what I did.”

“That’s good.”

She’s looking over Jon’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

“Me starting to re-arranging the meet and greet area.” He's only got a few lines on the paper, but there are several crumpled ones on the floor behind him. Though as he adds a few more, she's getting a feel for where he's going.

That also gets a raised eyebrow, and Rey doesn’t say it, but he can feel the _tell me more_ coming off of her.

“Okay, so this is a culture that pretty much worships strength and power. Physical strength and military power. Now, Kylo’s about the size of a mountain, and when he feels like it, he can project a tangible wall of _don’t fuck with me._ Plus, we’re in the middle of _his_ ship, and it’s the biggest, most weapon encrusted one in the galaxy. Now, there’s nothing I can do about the ship angle. I can’t just whisk up an armada for you on a whim. And I don’t know if you can do the _don’t fuck with me_ vibe, but if you can, I’d encourage it. I do know you are not 1.9 meters and 93 kilos of trained killer, so, obviously, I’ve got to do something so that first view of you makes them all understand that you are just as deadly as he is, and just as worthy of immediate, anal-puckering capitulation as he is.”

Rey’s eyes are wide, and it’s clear to Jon which bit of that is shocking to her. He waves it off, “It’s a…” Rey didn’t go through basic First Order training. Technically, Jon didn’t, either. He went through a program designed for officers from outside the First Order. That said, some of the sergeants who oversaw their first year of training had more than a few _colorful_ ways of describing different levels of fear. “You know… just pretend I said pants wetting, because it’s the same basic idea.”

Rey nods slowly. She looks at what Jon’s drawing. “Looks a lot like a throne.”

“Because it is. But, in deference to your man, we’ll call it a large chair on a raised dias.”

She rolls her eyes a bit and snerks. 

“They make them that way so that you are literally, as well as metaphorically, higher than everyone around you. It’s a visual trick to make people feel like you’re better/more powerful than they are. Now, since they are literally coming here to hire our bigger/more powerful-ness, and since you don’t have the physical body for it, I’m making do with staging the scene to make you look more… everything.”

Rey sighs.

“None of that. They’re expecting a warrior king, and I’m going to attempt to slide a warrior queen in on them, with no advanced warning, so, we’re going to dress everything up. And, unlike, say, prettying things up and playing up the femme side, this attack requires you to be you. Maybe up your own personal _grrrr_ factor up a bit.”

That’s reassuring. “So, if I… I don’t know, forget the right name or pick the wrong fork...”

“Don’t forget the names. That part matters. That part _always_ matters. But they won’t know the right fork, either, so don’t worry about that.”

Rey sighs at that. She looks around the room. “Your mom and Ellie?”

“Not sure about Ellie. Probably, hopefully, making sure we’ve got Pat and Schiff behind us on this. Mom’s back at her place, with your dress and enough droids to fill her living room. She’s in charge of the physical packaging of you as the warrior queen.”

“And that means?”

“Fairly modest gown, lots of expensive details, they like money, too, and colors that are close to, but not exactly mirroring the Order.”

“No head to toe black?”

“Yes, Lady Ren, I didn’t think we needed to copy his style exactly. Though, I suppose, if you want to, we can run the fabric through a quick dye.” Jon thinks on that for a moment. “Actually… I’ll talk to Mom. We might do that.”

Rey rubs her head. “I’m feeling less like a person and more like a prop by the moment.”

Jon half-smiles at her. “When we get to plan one of these more than,” he checks the chrono, “thirty-two hours in advance, we can get more of you as a person here, but… Honestly, we’re using you as a placeholder. For this, you are a prop. We need someone to stick on a throne, and you’re the next best thing to Kylo, so on that throne you go.” He stretches out his hands in a _we’re making do_ sort of gesture.

She nods. Then she looks over to Poe. “Uh?”

“He’s delivered the medbay, deposited Artoo to make sure it got set up right, and now I’ve got him here on…” He sees the way Rey is watching him, and he just knows Poe’s deep enough asleep he’s not going to hear it, though he does lower his voice a bit, “Shit, honestly, I’m not really sure. It just feels right, so… He’s here. I’m not sending you in flying solo.”

Rey smiles a bit at that. “Wanted another friend, for me and you?”

“Yeah, maybe. I do know what, on a literal level, he’s going to be doing. I’m giving him the twins, and you’ve got grandpa. He’ll be getting an uncensored feel for the twins, who they really are and what they’re really going to do if we give them this, and you’ll be making sure the K’Aar feels like we’re not brushing him off.”

“I think I’m better at getting a feel for people than Poe is.”

It’s clear that she’s talking about her Force skills, and that Jon had forgotten them. He recovers fast, though. “Yeah, but the chance that I can convince Grandpa that Poe belongs on that throne is just about non-existent, but I can convince him you do. Plus, Poe’s plenty good enough at reading people to show two twenty-two-year-olds a good afternoon and charm them into revealing who they really are.” 

"We could put you on the throne."

Jon just laughs. He's quiet about it, not wanting to wake up Poe, but it's a good, deep one. When he finishes he says, wrapping an arm around Rey and giving her a swift hug. "Thanks, I needed that."

Rey decides not to press further on that one, and says, “We don’t know who the boys are?”

“We know what’s in the reports. We know what’s in the top-secret, no-names-attached, we’ll-deny-it-if-it-ever-gets-out report. But we want to know what they weren’t willing to write down, even if it didn’t have their names attached to it. What we want to know is the kind of stuff no one was willing to write down, and probably get confirmation of the things we've read between the lines. So, with any luck, you’ll get Grandpa’s uncensored view of the situation. Poe’ll get a feel for the kids. I’ll stage manage the whole thing. And by the end of the afternoon, the actual experts, who will be hovering in the back, listening, will know what’s what, and give us a good plan for how to deal with this.”

“And then what?”

“Then you sit down with the three of them, explain what the Order is suggesting, what we’re willing to do to enforce that suggestion, and assuming they like it, they say yes, and our legal department talks to their wonks, and we get it all set up, and the credits come rolling in.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

There’s an almost manic gleam to Jon’s eyes as he says, “Easy, yeah, right, _easy_.”

 _That’s_ when Rey gets hit with how nervous, under the surface, Jon is about this.

She sighs at that, too. Then she rests a hand on his shoulder. She looks at the glass that’s on his drawing board, but doesn’t try to smell it to see if the clear liquid in it is water or vodka.  

She wishes she could comfort him, tell him it’s going to be okay, that this will all work out, but… She doesn’t know, or feel, that that’s true. She doesn’t feel it isn’t. There’s… no impending sense of doom. Fear, she’s afraid of failing, but she’s not getting any pre-cog either way, about this.

“It’s late, isn’t it?”

“Early, technically.”

“How about you get some sleep? I’m going to go to Kylo, spend some time with him, then home, see what’s going on there. When do you need me back here?”

“Do you know when second shift starts?”

“Yes.”

“Back here, then. I’ll have breakfast brought up, and we’ll get moving forward.”

He takes a sip of his drink. Bringing it up to his face means it’s close enough for Rey to smell it. It’s not water.

She also notices that he’s not moving in any way that’s remotely close to suggesting he’s going to his bed.

“Sleep?”

Jon sighs. “Rey… Uh… I know, given what you’ve been up to, it can’t be avoided, but, you reek, and now my bed does, and…”

She winces. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Once I get a laundry droid with clean linens up here, I’ll get a rest, but…”

She nods. “I can’t smell it anymore.”

“Which is a blessing. That said, if you could… Get a shower and some clean clothing between now and then…”

“I can certainly get a shower. Uh… All of my clothing is in one of two rooms Kylo’s been sick in.”

He nods. “When you go back to Kylo, tell C8 to make sure the laundry service gets in there. Until then, if you need to, you can borrow a bathrobe from me. When you get back, I’m likely giving you to Mom and Ellie and Threepio. They’ll get you ready for tomorrow.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Overseeing turning his not-a-throne room back into a throne room. Figuring out what the hell I’m putting him,” he gestures to Poe, “in to make him look like _The Maji._ Making sure that all the details for the meeting have been put into place properly. And likely sewing until my eyes fall out.”

Rey looks curiously at him. “Can’t you have a droid do that?”

“Yes,” he touches the sketch on his drawing board, “but like sketching everything out, I find it relaxing. It’s easier to see the problems, and the solutions, if I’m sewing or sketching. Hands busy, mind clear, problems solved.”

Rey nods at that. “This isn’t easy for you, either?”

“Not easy, no. And it’s more not easy than it should have been, but… We’ll pull through, and it’ll be splendid.” He’s as much convincing himself as her. “Go, find your way to heal your loves.”

 

 

* * *

Easier said than done.

All of this is easier said than done.

She goes to Kylo first, and he’s curled into a little ball, on his side, under all the blankets, shivering slightly. And, having only been near the Hiffa clinging on her skin, her nose had re-adjusted, and now she can smell it hanging on Kylo again. It’s on his skin, and in his hair, bleeding through every exhale, and poisoning his sweat.

That makes her wince. Both for her own nose, and for Jon’s bedding. Hopefully the laundry droid will be there soon, and he can rest.

 _You awake?_ She thinks it quietly to him, and he doesn’t stir. So she asks the med droid, “Is his fever higher?”

It nods at her.

She knows that’s normal. It’ll go up and down over the course of this. She just wishes it wouldn’t, as she settles next to him, and slowly strokes his hair. It’s sweaty, which she considers a good sign, because that means he’s got enough fluids in him so that he can sweat.

She checks the bedding, smoothing it out, so his IV doesn’t get tangled in it, and he fusses some, because she’s letting cold air in that he’s not appreciative of.

Rey curls around his back. He relaxes in her arms, shivering easing.

Rey kisses the back of his neck. _This, here, now_ is what she wants to do. Take care of Kylo. Hover around him and make him feel better with her touch. She doesn’t want to be out there Lady Renning, and she doesn’t want to go back to Lirium and be Mistress Rey who’s supposed to know all the answers, and…

She just wants to be Rey, Kylo’s _wife_ , taking care of her man, making him feel something approaching slightly better.

It’s just… too fucking much.

Any one of these things she could… on their own… maybe…

Her eyes are burning. She’s tired. Soul tired and body tired, and she can feel that she’s going to start crying, and…

She rubs her eyes. She can’t cry. Not here. She’ll wake him up, and he needs to sleep, and if he figures out why she’s crying that’ll just make everything worse, and…

She pulls herself out of bed, and grabs a towel, and heads to the refresher.

Shower. A shower. Get a shower. She can do that. Just like scavenging. When the job’s too big, break it down into each part.

Shower. Water on. Temperature to 43. Take off clothing.

Clothing.

Oh _fuck._

Her shoulders slump again. Her clothing is… nasty. When was the last time she put on fresh clothing, or got a shower for that matter? Rey’s got no idea. She tosses it to the hamper, and half hopes it doesn’t find it’s way back here again.

Water. Water next. Standing about naked isn’t doing the job. She sticks her hand under the water, it’s up to temperature, so she steps in, and sighs.

It feels good.

Really good.

Hot water, liter upon liter of it sluicing down on her. She turns her face to the water, and feels it rushing over her, pulling away hours, days, a week? Has it been a week? Probably not a full week. Too long… Pulling away too long of taking care of everyone else and not taking care of herself.

_You should never be this tired._

_Using the tools at your disposal._

But, of course, they aren’t tools. They’re people. If they’d been _tools_ she could have picked them up and used them easily, because _tools_ have no expectation of what you’re supposed to be and what you can handle, and tools don’t judge you if you do it wrong, and _tools_ are still you taking care of things that you should be able to take care of.

 _Tools_ aren’t asking for help. _Tools_ aren’t admitting you don’t know how to do this. _Tools_ aren’t…

She has the sense of someone watching her. That’s _unsettling_ because she knows Kylo’s asleep and in bed, and he’s the only one who should have been able to get in here without opening the door.

She lets her Force creep out, searching for… It’s not alive. That’s clear, and…

“LUKE!” Then she lowers her voice, because she’d again prefer not to wake up Kylo, who, on a good day, doesn’t need to find her naked in the shower with his dead Uncle hanging around, and now, pretty much out of his head with a fever _really_ doesn’t need to walk in on this.

She refuses to open her eyes and see what the hell it is he thinks he’s doing here.

“I’m not looking. And… Uh… Well, it’s not like I’ve got a body anymore. I never burned really hot in that direction anyway, but… I don’t, at all, now.”

She opens her eyes, and he is back to her, staring intently at the door.

“Does he really have an all black bathroom?”

“We’re working on that.”

They’re both quiet. Finally, Rey says, “Look this is the first moment I’ve been enjoying in a while, and… While I might not mind company in the shower, you aren’t the person I like showering with, so…”

Luke shrugs. “Enjoying? You’re crying out loudly enough with the Force that I’m here, and I’d imagine the only reason he’s not is that he’s sick enough his sense are down.”

She sighs at that, too, and reaches for the shower handle.

“You don’t have to get out. Enjoy the water. It blew my mind the first time I got to have a real water shower. Nothing had ever felt like that before, and… especially after…” He doesn’t keep talking, but she knows it was after the First Death Star, and what he’d done was just starting to sink in, and Leia had said, ‘Go get a shower, it’ll help…’

She’s almost confused, and then remembers, “Right, Tattooine.”

“Yes. Another nobody from a desert with a great destiny set up to go forth and…” he makes a pbthht sound. “I never even saw enough water in one place to get a shower until I was on a Rebel base. And we were moisture farmers, but… A really good season was two thousand liters more than what we personally used.”

Rey nods at that, and turns so her back is to the water, letting it roll over her. 

They’re, again, quiet for a moment, before Luke says to her, “Leia and Han… they… always acted like they knew what they were doing. Always. With Han… I could read him well enough to know it was an act, and when you got to know him better, you could see how often he just… Didn’t know. He was winging it most of the time, praying it’d work out. For a man who didn’t, not really, even with all of us around him, believe in the Force, he certainly relied on it, a lot.

“But… Leia, and Lando, and… they just… always _knew._ Right, wrong, didn’t matter. They knew what they were going to do.

“Obi Wan, calm and centered and just… perfect. He always knew, too.

“And I didn’t. I tried. And they gave me ideas of where and how and all the rest, but… The New Jedi wasn’t something I _wanted_ to do. But it was supposed to be part of the balance, and restoring the galaxy that came before the Empire and putting things back the way they were supposed to be, and I was the only one who could do it, and…”

“And?” Rey asks.

“I was never entirely sure if it was _right_. It _had_ to be right, you know? Destiny and everything, but… I didn’t take the time to get into the Force and really _feel_ it.”

“You didn’t?”

He shrugs. “It was so blindingly, obviously, _right_ , what would have been the point?”

“Ah.” She’s not immediately seeing where this comes in.

“And I’m not sure if the Force would have… given me the map, you know? We say it does. It’s in the ancient texts, but… I don’t think it would have just laid it all out for me. Might have given me a better sense of purpose, though. Or more courage to find my own path.”

Rey nods, and reaches for the shampoo. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m even more tired than I was the last time we talked, but… I’m not seeing where this is going. It’s an awful pep talk, and…”

He waves that off. “Yeah. Okay, short version. You don’t have to be all things for all people. And maybe some time in prayer would help you sort of what you need to do, or maybe not, but it likely won’t hurt.”

“That’s advice I can take.”

“Also, ask for help. The only person who’s judging you for needing it is you.”

“There are a lot of people who expect me to be—“

“Fuck them!”

“Luke!”

“What? Just because I don’t usually curse doesn’t mean I’ve never heard the word or can’t figure out where it’d be appropriate in a conversation. I taught a school and spent fifteen years surrounded by mostly teenagers. I know more curse words in more different languages than Threepio. Frustrated fourteen-year-olds with creative vocabularies and the ability to project their frustrations are not, generally speaking, circumspect in their thoughts.”

Rey sniggers a bit at that. She’s been mentally blasted with more than a few choice phrases over her teaching career, too.

“And I know this, too. Okay, yes, literally, people are watching, and they are judging, and they all expect you to do or be different things. Fuck ‘em. The ones who matter, to you, personally, and in the galaxy as a whole, are the ones who understand that you cannot do or be everything because you are human, and no human can do or be everything to everyone. Anyone else isn’t worth the mental effort, so they don’t count.”

They’re quiet again for a moment, and then Luke says, “Better pep talk?”

“Yeah… Luke?”

“Rey?”

“Do you really think there’s some great destiny? I mean, now?”

He sighs. “I… I don’t know. The sacred texts talk about it. The Jedi of old did. Vader and the Emperor did… Granted, they were talking about a destiny I threw off… So… I don’t know. Maybe…” He turns so they can have eye contact, and this bit of the conversation is real, and serious enough, that Rey doesn’t mind. “I wonder these days, how much of _destiny_ is a manipulation tactic. How much of it is a way to make people do the things you want them to do. ‘You have to do this; it’s your _destiny._ ’ I’ve been… trying to understand what the Force has been teaching us over the last hundred years. Last thousand, too, I guess, but… Why Snoke? Why Palpatine? Why… Alderaan and the Hosnian system and… just stupid little petty bits and pieces. What’s the point of that? What’s the balance, and does it really matter, or are these the things we tell ourselves to make this…” he gestures to indicate the galaxy, universe at large… “make sense? Make it bearable, because being adrift and alone in the galaxy is too terrifying? And, I just don’t know.”

“What about faith? A lot of the religions I read about talk a lot about faith.”

He shrugs. “On one level, faith is easy. I _know_ the Force is there because I _use it._ I’m here, talking with you, _dead_ because the Force is _real._ That’s the easy level. Of course, that also doesn’t actually require faith, because you and I are personally, tangibly, liv-- existing it.”

“Yeah, not what I mean by faith. Though, apparently, there are religions out there where you can’t just… call on the power of your God and do stuff.”

“And for people who can’t touch the Force the way we do, obviously, faith takes on a different meaning, but… You’ve got to have faith… Again, real? Manipulation tactic? Coping mechanism? All three? I don’t know. Trust in the Force. Okay, great. I was sure I was doing that when I was running the school. I _knew_ back when I was trying to pull Ben away from Han what the Force wanted. I was, also, in hindsight, wrong. But it was _real_ and earnest and… ”

“You were wrong only if you assume the Force is always right?”

He half smiles at her. “Exactly. Or assume that my understanding of the Force, and The Force, were one and the same. According to what I was reading, what the Jedi had to say, every ancient text I got my hands on, I was doing exactly what Ben should have needed. I should have been able to guide him away from his dark, and turn him into a happy and serene Jedi. It’s there in the books. Do this stuff, and the Force will give you success. The Force _wants_ us to be settled in the Light. So… Did I do a bad job of it? It worked for M’Gll, and Krenna, and Jamison, and Hella, and…” His voice goes quiet as he thinks of his Light students. “It worked more often than it didn’t. So, was Ben just… wrong? Or were the directions wrong?” He looks so old right then. And Rey knows in her guts why he was terrified to teach her anything. “I know which of those answers I prefer, now, but…”

“But the answer you prefer now is also the one that absolves both of you of any guilt and failing.”

“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes and sighs a bit. “Shocking how that’s the one that feels _right_ these days, huh? Of course, talk to Be—Obi Wan or Yoda and they’re all fine with, ‘Yep, you, and us. We all just failed miserably. The instructions are right. The old Jedi were right. We’re just bad teachers.’”

“Yeah.” She sighs. And then turns her face back to the water. “Luke. Thanks. This… is the sort of stuff I needed.”

He nods, and she feels him vanish.  

 

* * *

Everything didn’t fall apart while she was gone.

Granted, with a new medbay… Well, the same old medbay, just… _outfitted_ beyond her wildest dreams… her primary value to the group, getting sick people to and from their beds to the IVs, has vanished.

Rearranging a bit apparently means that the back wall has been subbed out for an entire other room, filled with sixteen more beds and more… medical stuff… than Rey’s ever seen. There’s room for everyone in here now. MX-6 and Artoo are riding herd on a… herd, of little hovering droids, which, because they hover, don’t take up as much room between the beds as they do, and all of them are making sure that everyone has all of the fluids, meds, and… anything else, they could possibly need.

The only thing the little hovering droids can’t do it lift patients and talk, and MX-6 has both of those areas covered.

“Rey!” This time she’s sure MX-6 is pleased to see her. “I see you found me some help.”

She glances around. “Apparently.” Jon wasn’t kidding. _Everything_ they could have possibly needed is here.

So are most of the kids, too. Jacen seems to still be resting in his own cottage, and right now Finn’s nowhere to be seen, likely also resting in his own cottage, but, everyone else is here.

She notices the smell of Hiffa, but it’s significantly less intense than she’d expect it to be. “Uh… I was expecting… more mess… if everyone was all in one space.”

“If Artoo hadn’t brought fifty liters of hexadihydrazinelyne, it would be an intolerable mess, but as it is, we can keep up,” MX-6 says.

“What’s…” she gives up attempting to name that chemical.

“It’s an anti-emetic.”

She blinks. Right… Kylo’s on one of them, too. That’s why he’s only running to the refresher two or three times a day.

“You weren’t giving it out before…”

“Because we didn’t have it.”

“Ah… Is there anything else you’d want stocked but—“

“Not any more. Anything and everything I could possibly want is here. They set up an extra storage shed outside, and… I have medications for diseases I’ve never even heard of before. And the upgrades to my database to diagnose them, now.”

“Okay…”

“I suppose the likelihood of you and yours exploring the wide reaching strands of the galaxy, and then getting into fire fights while you’re there, coming back both wounded and infected are low, but should that happen, I’m ready for it, now.”

“Excellent?”

“I think so.” MX-6 appears to be quite pleased by this. And likely by the sound of seventeen sick people, mostly sleeping, though a few of them are just lying around feeling horrible.

And no one, at all, is throwing up.

 

 

* * *

Rey heads over to one of the lower bunks, where Torine is napping, and Xanth is sitting, cross-legged, at the end, quietly reading a story. Several of the Maji around him are either listening or drifting along.

Rey sits there for a moment, too, and, this is something she’s never considered, but Xanth’s reading is a medicine of its own, she thinks. His voice is soft and warm, the vocal equivalent of being wrapped in a warm blanket and offered a cup of perfect tea.

“You mind an interruption?” she asks.

Kven, Opal, and Blaine, who are the awake and listening Maji all answer with variations on, “No.”

Xanth marks his spot, and then lays the datapad down. “Is this… From Kylo?”

Rey half nods. “From the Order, yes.”

“It’s…” he’s still looking around. “Really impressive.”

“Yeah. I… It didn’t occur to me to ask. I didn’t think it’d be… this.”

“Yeah. Well… Anyway. It’s here, and,” he gestures around. “Suddenly our job got a whole lot easier. We’re just… sort of keeping them company, now. Reading stories, holding hands, fluffing pillows, and adding or removing blankets as needed.”

Rey nods at that, too. She looks across the room to where Critt is crashed out on his bunk. “You talk to Critt?”

“Nah. It’s not so urgent anymore. He’s mostly sleeping. MX says he’s doing better. Fever’s broken, but he’s really tired and weak and feels like he was run over by every Favier we’ve got, twice, so…”

Rey nods again. “Resting is the best thing for him, then.”

“I think so.” He looks at the other Maji. “I talked with MX a bit about my idea, too. It thought of a downside. Maybe.”

“What?” Rey’s worried that this is going to be some sort of terrible thing, like her plan, but at least they didn’t try it on anyone.

“Okay. You go through Hiffa, either regular, like them, or sped up, like Critt, Jacen, and Finn, and when you’re done, you’re immune to it. Your body kills so many Hiffas it builds up Hiffa killing specialists, and if Hiffa shows up again, it kills it dead on sight. MX thinks if we use my plan, especially from the beginning, that your system might not get to kill enough Hiffa to be immune to it when you’re done. Might not be an issue here, now, but if we get good at this, and try to use it with other illnesses, it might be an issue then.”

Rey thinks about that. “So, as long as we’re really careful with re-infection vectors…”

“Yeah, Hiffa can’t survive below 30 for more than a few hours, so go to a room, open the doors, give it two hours, and all of it’s dead. But, say, back in the summer, that wouldn’t have been an option, so… Reinfection might have been a real issue.”

“Everything in the galaxy is a series of tradeoffs, isn’t it?”

She’s not sure if Xanth gets what she’s saying by that, but he does reply with, “Yeah.”

“Are you and Critt going to try anyway?”

“When he’s feeling better, assuming anyone’s still got live virus, sure. I think it’s worth testing.” Rey can feel that sitting here, in the medbay, that Xanth just figured out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He wants to run the best medbay ever, and heal people, and find new and interesting ways to kill diseases that no one thought were killable before. And right this second, he's wondering if Critt may decide to be his long-term partner for this, because for him to swing it, he's going to need a darkling with an interest in healing. 

She smiles at that.

“That sounds good to me, too. Tomorrow?”

Xanth shakes his head. “Day after, maybe. Jacen’s up and moving around some. And we’ve seen Finn come in to check on Rose a few times, but Critt’s just wrecked, and everyone else is pretty flat.”

“It’s under control and manageable, but not good?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I probably won’t be able to get here tomorrow, and maybe not again today.”

“Did something go wrong with Kylo?”

She almost snorts a laugh at that. “No. He’s snoozing away, killing Hiffa, and resting. No, it’s the fact that he’s supposed to be off being Master Ren, and he’s in no condition for it, so apparently I’m supposed to step in and be Lady Ren, and…”

At this point, Savarah’s drifted over, leaning against the wall behind Elias. “You’re going to be great. We watched the footage of you at the First Night parties, and you were perfect. Looked like princess.”

 

 

“What does a princess look like?” Rey asks, wondering if Savarah’s got the image of the Handsome Prince and Princess in her mind.

“Like you in a fancy dress with pretty hair.”

Rey laughs at that, too. “Thanks.”

Savarah rubs her lips together. “Uh… Could I come?”

“Come where?”

“The court of Lady Ren?”

“Uhhh…” Rey’s not panicking, but that idea does make her nervous, but she’s not sure why.

“We talked about it, when we watched the video. You need people like us, who can go to these things, and blend in, and make people feel good about it, and pay attention, and… Jacen’ll kill me if I get to go to one before he does, but…” Rey can feel that Savarah’s really eager to get one over on Jacen. Critt might have been too sick to notice what Jacen was projecting, but Savarah wasn’t, and right now… She’s  not angry, too much, or jealous, too much, after all, she knows that Critt prefers her, and she knows that Critt’s an awfully spiffy person, so she understands why people would want him, but if she got a chance to poke Jacen some, she wouldn’t say no.

“Not this time. If there’s another Last Night style party, maybe, but… This is a mediation deal, so there’s no room for someone to linger in the background just… making things go smoothly.” Though as Rey thinks about it, building something like that in for future deals is probably a good plan. Then she thinks about it more, and realizes that’s basically Jon’s job and what _he’s_ going to be doing at this thing. “I’ll talk to Jon about it, for future ones, too. He might have an idea of how to use people like you, if you’d want to.”

“Want to? Of course we want to. The others are all sick, but… If they weren’t…”

“Rey…” Opal’s voice this time, she hasn’t opened her eyes, but she’s apparently tracking the conversation.

“Yes, Opal?”

“Why don’t we live with the Order? Cassie’s wondered that, since it’s become clear we’re not… Hiding out from them.”

Rey sighs at that, too. “I think… Because I don’t, yet, really know what the Maji is or does, besides make sure you guys have a good place to live and decent lessons about how to… be… with and in the Force, it’s easier for us to be out of the view of the galaxy at large. If we were on the _Supremacy_ I think we’d get a lot more attention—“

“And we wouldn’t have Critt, that’s for sure,” Xanth says.

“If we’d started as part of the Order…” Rey says, “I don’t think Kylo could have made it the Order, not the way it is now. And we wouldn’t have… any of this, because Master Poe, who found most of you, wouldn’t have helped me to set this up if he’d thought it was part of the First Order, back when we were starting up.”

“Because he was with the Resistance,” Opal says. “Granted, so we were.”

“I know. So was I. I met Kylo, fighting for the Resistance.”

They all stare at her. She notices she’s getting a bit more attention from some of the other beds, and Cassie’s heading over to listen, too.

And… okay… well… If this is the Handsome Prince and his Lady, and managing this story is part of the job… Well…

“You know how Master Finn and I met, right?” Rey starts, and from there she begins to tell a somewhat edited version of the story of her handsome prince, and how she saved him from the monster, and how he cut the monster in half, and how they started to drift into each other’s orbit.

And, apparently, Xanth isn’t the only one who can soothe sick people by telling a good story.

 

 

* * *

Food is good.

Food she doesn’t have to cook for herself is better.

Food she doesn’t have to cook for herself, sitting, waiting, hot and ready, in a room that doesn’t smell like Hiffa (which also means it doesn’t _taste_ like Hiffa) is even better.

Jon’s looking pretty tired as he sits at his kitchen table, letting everyone else buzz around him, eating their fill, but he’s also looking fairly pleased, too.

This, everyone, in one room, eating, getting ready to do this, with… twenty-six hours to go, is good.

“Nap soon?” Rey asks him.

“Yeah. Laundry got here about an hour ago. Soon as we’re done. I’m going to crash.”

“Good.”

Poe’s sitting next to Jon, tucking into his breakfast. “So, what do you want me doing while you crash? Sticking with the ladies?” He smiles at Mirina, Ellie, and Rey.

Rey can feel that they might not mind having Poe around, but he’s also not part of their idea of how today with her is supposed to go.

And she can see that Poe knows that, too, but he’s making sure that if she wants him around, he’ll be there. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. “They tell me part of what I’m supposed to do is learn how to navigate women-only spaces.”

Ellie smirks a bit, but doesn’t say anything as she spreads butter on her toast.

“Well, never let it be said I butted myself into a hen-party.” Though it’s clear that if he were _invited_ to one, say by the hen sitting next to him, that he’ll butt his way in with the best of them.

Jon’s pretty tired by this point. It’s not the first time he’s gone more than a day without sleep. It won’t be the last, but, since Laundry left less than an hour ago, he didn’t take a stim because he’s hoping to sleep, so he’s flagging seriously. So, if didn’t have to, personally, oversee the throne room set up, that would likely increase not just the probability, but the duration of a good nap… “You’ve got command experience, right?” he says to Poe.

“Supposedly that’s what the rank indicated.”

“Right. Commander Dameron,” Jon misses the way his mother’s eyes light up at that. Commander is _not_ a First Order, or Order, or, for that matter New Republic rank. It is a Rebel one, though… Poe’s got to be too young to have been part of the Rebellion. Even they weren’t so hard up for people as to put toddlers in charge. She glances at Rey, and realizes it’s got to be a Resistance rank. “My second-in-command, Emily, who is generally who I put in charge of stuff like this, is supposed to be running the Tactical Design wing these days, which, even though Ren kept forgetting, is also a full time job requiring a lot of attention and focus. So… I’ve got plans, and I’ve got people, and I can get this done on my own, but assuming you’re feeling a desire to be useful, making sure they get it done right would be useful to me, and to her because instead of pausing her job to do mine, you could do it.”

Poe’s looking awfully pleased by that. “I can do that. Hell, not like I’ve never built anything before. I can likely toss in on getting it set up, too. The problem I can’t fix with a welding torch doesn’t exist.”

That stops Jon and Mirina short. In their world, officers oversee, they don’t… do.

Ellie smirks a bit, still pleased. In her world, or more correctly, Pat’s, officers oversee, and _good_ officers, if there’s a time crunch, or if they happen to be good at whatever it is, and there’s nothing else more pressing for them to be doing, both of which appear to be describing Poe’s current situation, _do_ , as well.

Poe and Rey don’t miss that.

“Lady Kinear?” Poe asks.

“The first officer Pat served under in the Republic… this was, of course, a _long_ time ago… came up from Engineering. And if the men couldn’t do whatever it was they needed to do because their tools weren’t up to the job, he’d hop right in and fix them himself, rather than waiting on Engineering to get their bums over and take care of it. Sometimes he had other things he needed to be doing, but if he didn’t, he’d take care of the problem himself. Pat always appreciated that.”

“So, he’d step in and fix things, too?” Rey asks.

“Only in the metaphorical sense. There’s a good many things our Pat can do, but anything involving fixing something with tools wasn’t on the list. That said, if you ever needed someone to fix something involving people… He’d delegate if he was busy, and, especially as he went up the ranks, he often was, but… If he had the time, and one of his men needed him, he was there.”

Poe cocks his head a bit. “Sounds like a good officer.”

Ellie appreciates that. “One would hope that after seventy-five years of ordering people around, he’d be good at it.”

Poe smirks a bit at that. “One would, but… Well, I’m sure you know, some commanders haven’t had a new, or good, thought in decades, so…”

Ellie nods at him. “Oh, I _do._ ” She smirks a bit at that. “Did you know… Well, you couldn’t have, not personally, you aren’t old enough… Did you know of General Hestor of the Amalia Wing?”

Poe smirks a bit back at her. “I’ve heard a story or two. Back when I was in officer school with the New Republic, he was in the curriculum.”

That gets an intrigued, and irked, and… there are more layers there than Rey can easily read, but they aren’t immediately angry, flush out of Mirina. She wonders a bit if Ellie’s the one who came up with this idea, just to rub Poe and Mirinia together so she can sharpen up her people reading.

And as soon as she’s had that thought, she notices Ellie looking oddly satisfied.

Her eyes don’t narrow, but she does wonder. Then she says to Poe, “Desert orphans on the far edge of nowhere, haven’t. What’s the story with him?”

Ellie looks to Poe, likely curious to see how the Rebellion taught this.

“Hestor… He had to have been ancient… Uh… They finally took him down in… What was it? Ten BBY?”

“Something like that,” Ellie replies. “And, from my perch, I’d have called him, a bit past middle-aged, but…”

Poe offers her a bit of a smile. “I know he predated the Empire. Made a name for himself during the Clone wars for one, very successful, attack. You know what a PBR-8 is?”

Rey, Mirina, and Jon shake their heads.

“Little two-wheeled scooter type things. You sit astride them, and use your hips and thighs to steer, leaving your hands free to fire, and with proper armor, you turn infantry into cavalry, but, unlike, say a CR-4 or Plusane 2, you can maneuver through things like a forest.”

“Which is the terrain he was in the first time he did this,” Ellie adds.

Poe nods. “So he masses a million men on those little things, and winds them through the trees, and obliterates the forces he’s up against. He’s more mobile than the enemy, so he can flank them, and get behind, and just crushes them. It was one of the most decisive victories of the war.”

Ellie nods. “I would also add, that he’s the one who designed the PBR-8. In addition to having won amazingly with them, they’re also, his, personal, baby.”

Poe nods at that, and takes a sip of his juice. “That makes sense. Anyway, end of the fight, he’s got his General’s stripes, and something of a reputation for being a genius tactician. Fast forward a bit, and the Empire’s in play, and they toss him, and his PBR-8s into service in several other fights.”

“And he does exactly the same thing, every time,” Ellie replies

“And the first two or three, it works amazingly.” Poe continues. “Which is likely why we studied in him officer school.”

Ellie smirks a bit. “Because the first two or three, he’s again, in tightly packed terrain where he needs a lot of motion, and there’s plenty of cover, so heavy armor is less of a necessity.”

“And he’s fighting against a million guys all tightly packed together in huge, lumbering vehicles that are bogged down by the terrain.”

Ellie nods at that. “Then came the battle of R’Lorh.”

“Which is a swamp. It’s filled with tightly packed vegetation. So maneuverability is still an issue. You want something light and small, but those wheels on the PBR aren’t designed for mud and water. He got his guys down there, massed on the battle field, and they got massacred because the PBRs sink like the rocks they are.”

Rey and Jon wince. Mirina looks embarrassed.

“It gets worse, doesn’t it?” Rey asks.

Poe’s grinning, enjoying this. “Let’s just say, they were bad in swamps, worse on sand, a death trap on ice, and a fucking disaster on bare rock. And time after time after time, he kept doing the exact same thing.”

“So, each time, each new terrain, he became even less effective because as soon as the enemy side found out they were fighting him, they immediately knew how to counter him,” Ellie adds. She glances at Poe… “You know, there were stories… we could never get confirmation, but… It was rumored that your side used to poison decent Generals to get them out of play so Hestor could be brought in.”

Poe just smiles. “Before my time. Literally, I was born in 2 ABY. But… If I’d heard that sort of rumor, I wouldn’t have doubted it. And if my training had involved stories of how moving the people you want into positions where you need them, on both your side and the other’s, well, you wouldn’t have doubted it, either.”

Ellie’s eyes are knowing. “No, I wouldn’t have doubted that, at all.”

“I’ll admit though, there was a question about him on our side…” Ellie raises an eyebrow. “How’d he stay in command so long? We thought the Emperor took men like him out on the second misstep. But, he was there for what? Thirty years?”

Ellie smiles a bit at that, too. “Let’s put it this way. He was just so horribly bad at what he did… How could that be an advantage?  But… If you look at the timeline, he fought a _lot_ of battles. And lost a _lot_ of them. But, really critical battles. Ones that mattered. He won all of them. His tactics suddenly changed. He—“

“Wasn’t actually him.” Poe doesn’t say, _you fuckers,_ but it’s clear he’s thinking it. “You guys built up the worst general in the galaxy, and then we’d go in, sure we could beat him, and we won a lot of little, stupid battles against him, because he was terrible, and…”

“And when it mattered, we had someone who looked a whole lot like him, but wasn’t him, who had real commanders who knew what they were doing, in play.” Ellie’s smile is bright, and then she looks to Rey. “Control the information around you. Control how people understand you. And then you can _use_ the expectations of the people around you to your advantage. Once the Rebellion knew they were going up against General Hestor, they’d send in their less-experienced commanders, and less-well-equipped troops, knowing they could beat him one-handed. Many times they were right. But when it _mattered,_ they weren’t.”

Mirina smirks a bit at that. Likely because that’s a story of the Empire doing well. She adds, “And if something doesn’t add up… Well, anyone can be lucky once or twice, but much beyond that, something’s hinky.”

“And you should have an easier than usual time figuring out what the _hinky_ thing is,” Ellie adds. “Likewise, there are no contradictions. If someone is, for some reason, acting horribly out of character, like the Emperor not summarily executing Hestor, you _know_ you’re missing information.”

Poe adds a lopsided smile to that. “Leia always used to say, ‘You can always trust a man to be himself.’”

Mirina stiffens at that mention, but Ellie nods. “There were a legion of things Organa and I never agreed on, but that would not have been one of them.”

 

 

* * *

When breakfast wraps up, Ellie says to Rey, “I think… and… I know you probably won’t like this, but… Hiffa reeks. It’s not a subtle scent at all, and… we,” she gesture to Mirina, “think this would go a lot better if you didn’t smell like it for tomorrow. So… Go, spend some quality time with Kylo. Snuggle him, get another visit with your Maji, and then, once you’ve done that, you’re going to join us, and then stay with us until after the meetings are all done. We’ll have clean clothing for you, and special soap for your skin and hair. That way, when you meet the K’Aar, you won’t have the scent of it lingering on your skin.”

Ellie’s right. She doesn’t like that. “But…”

“We’ll make sure that if anything happens C8 will get you, immediately.” Mirina says, “But… it’s on your skin and in your hair and… At least two showers, and we’ve got the soap for it, and probably some perfume, too, and new shampoo.”

“The Princess in the stories doesn’t smell like something died in a sulfur mine after rolling around in a vat of puke?” Rey’s voice is dry as she says that, and… Actually, sarcasm does seem to help.

“Generally, no,” Ellie replies. “Or if she does, no one mentions it because they’d prefer she didn’t.”

“The Princess, in the stories, has no bodily functions at all, and is made of light, good thoughts, beauty, and calm. This is also true of everyone around her. No one ever has to fart in a big meeting, and the Handsome Prince can ride for days on end to go rescue her without ever having to take a shit.” Mirina’s horrified to hear this coming out of Jon, “But, the Princess and the stories are also _fictional_ ,” which is the first comment from Jon that’s Rey’s heard on this, and she rather likes how critical it is. He sighs a bit. “But… No meeting in the history of meetings ever went well when one participant smelled like death warmed over, so…”

Poe snerks at that. “Did I tell you the story of Leia meeting with the Kerath delegation?”

“No,” Rey says. “Is it going to involve terrible smells?”

“And gross bodily excretions. The Kerath were a sort of sentient slug, distantly related to the Hutts, but less attractive by human standards.”

Rey glares at him. “I can probably live without this story. At least now.”

“I’ll give you the punchline. It’s not like we were in a battle or ill health. This is just a formal treaty discussion between a wannabe member of the New Republic, and Leia as the New Republic’s representative. And we’re all dressed up and fancy for the gathering, but… we’re humans. Clean and spiffy humans, but humans none the less. They took one look at us, winced, and left. The translator told us that they couldn’t take how bad we smelled.”

Jon, who is clearly so tired he’s hit the point where everything is funny, starts to giggle at that. “The stench of humanity insulted their sensitive nostrils?”

“They didn’t have nostrils, more like… uh… stalks. Four, wet, slithery protrusions from the tops of what I’m going to call a head, with an eyeball on the end of each one. They were really fast though. We stepped in, and suddenly they just squirted this… mucus… and went zipping out of the room, gliding along on it.”

By that point, everyone else is laughing, too.

 

 

* * *

As Rey’s getting ready to go to Kylo, Poe catches her hand, and quietly says, while looking at Ellie and Mirina. “I’ve got my comm on me. No matter what they say, this does not have to be a you and them only sort of deal. You want company, you call, and I’ll be there, okay?”

She nods.

He squeezes her hand. “Maji unity or something, right?”

“Or something. You okay with overseeing… The throne room?”

He waves that off. “I’ve run security on more of these than I can count. That’s part of why I know how to build a lot of this stuff. Sometimes, you don’t trust the guys setting the stuff up, you send someone in on the crew to make sure it’s on the up and up.”

Rey nods. “One day, I want to hear why you were doing security instead of flying around.”

He gives her a little kiss on the cheek. “One day, I’ll tell you.”

Rey nods again, and vanishes, heading to Kylo’s room.

 

 

* * *

For a heartbeat, in the… space… between Jon’s room and Kylo’s, Rey’s not sure if she’d prefer Kylo be awake, where she could interact with him, some, but risk him picking up on what’s going on, or asleep, and just snuggle up with him, but miss out on a bit of conversation, and… him.

And then her wishes don’t matter, because she’s there, and… “You up?” she asks, quietly.

He rolls over, eyes closed, but facing her, and shivering a little less. “Sort of. I know you’re here. Don’t ask me to open my eyes, though.”

“Oh… sweetie.” As pet names go, she's not loving that one, either. It doesn’t quite feel right. He doesn’t seem to mind, and she settles on the bed behind him, snuggling up.

“I think I may have burned through any off time this month. It’s been… At least three days, right?”

She holds him a little tighter, and kisses the back of his neck. “At least.”

She feels him swallow, and curl tighter into her. “At least? Am I better off not knowing how long I’ve been down?”

“Probably.”

She feels a spark of annoyance at that, but it’s smothered by tired and sore and more tired and achy and cold… He’s so cold.

His teeth are chattering, so he switches to mentally talking. _How are things going on out there? C8 just tells me to rest._

“C8’s right. There’s nothing going on out there that we’re not handling just fine.” She’s relieved to see he doesn’t ask, who, specifically _we_ are, or what, precisely it is, they’re handling. “Xanth has an idea for dark-style healing. When Critt’s up and moving around more, we’re going to try it out.”

Kylo has the same reaction Critt did. _Dark doesn’t heal._

“Nope, but it changes things and destroys them, and right now the problem is you’ve got a virus that needs some changing and destroying.” She feels Kylo perk up a bit at that idea. “Yeah, I just need a darkling who’s healthy enough to spare some energy, and Xanth’s got an idea of how to use dark to modify the virus so it can’t reproduce. Light to bolster the immune system, a little, help it… focus the fight against the virus that can reproduce. Dark to sterilize as much of it as possible. You’ll still be sick, but not as bad or long.”

He nods. _That’s…_ She can feel he’s intrigued but too tired to really think about it.

“Go back to sleep, love. Hopefully, day after tomorrow, we’ll get you feeling better.”

He sighs a bit, and relaxes a little in her arms, and is asleep.

For a long time, Rey just holds him.

 

 

* * *

Rey leaves Lirium after another quick visit. And like before, with a herd of med-droids, every speck of medication they could possibly need, and plenty of time on their hands, the only thing left to do is wait.

Then she’s back in Kylo’s office.

“C8?”

“I’m here, Lady Ren.” She sees the glow of his eyes light up, and hears him step forward. _Black droid in a black room. We’ve really got to repaint or something in here._ “I need to get to Mirina Frake’s room, and I don’t know how.”

“She’s in suite 22A in the first hallway on the aftward side of the I-Deck.”

Rey smiles a little, and then stops, she doesn’t need to pretend she knows what she’s doing, not here, and not with C8. “I have no idea how to get there.”

“Ah. You’ll go to the elevator in the Master’s courtyard. From there punch in F Deck. Get off, take a tram to the twenty-second subsection. Then take the first elevator you see that goes up single floors. Hit I-Deck. You’ll likely need to use your… Do you have an ID chit?”

“No.”

“Certain floors require appropriate access to get to. I-Deck among them. We’re on AAA here, and I believe fewer than twenty people have an ID that can access this floor right now. I can’t make you an ID of your own, though I am setting the order for one to be made. Would you mind looking at me, with your face neutral?”

Rey does.

The glow of his eyes blinks out for a second, followed by, “Excellent. That’s a good image. IDs require your image and prints, but I know they’re in the system now. By the time you get back, I’ll have an ID chit for you.” He thinks for a moment. “And a proper comm link. For now, I’ll call ahead to Mistress Frakes, let her know you’re coming, and she can meet you at the correct elevator.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Lady Ren.”

“You can call me Rey.”

“I’m sure I can, but it doesn’t seem appropriate. I do not call him Kylo.”

“Okay.” She pauses for a moment, thinking. “You take orders from me?”

“That’s entirely likely. I suppose you could come up with something I won’t do, but it’s unlikely.”

“But you don’t take orders from Jon?”

“I have not been given any orders allowing me to take orders from the Lt. Commander. As long as the Master is present, I’ll do whatever the Lt. Colonel requests, because I know the Master approves, but as of this time, he has not given access to the Lt. Colonel to my programs.”

“If I told you to do that, would you?”

“Yes.”

“First of all, anything you can share with Kinear or Schiff, you can share with Jon.”

C8 nods.

“Second of all, why can I do that, but Jon couldn’t?”

“He is your _husband_ , Mistress. You are his legal next of kin, and have the right to life or death decisions in his place. If, like now, he is incapacitated, you get to make decisions for him.”

“Are you saying I’m the… Master of the Order… right now?”

“For all practical purposes, yes. Obviously, if you were to try something upsetting, something the Master clearly would not approve, there would likely be issues, but assuming you continue to do things he would likely do… Yes.”

Rey’s very proud of the fact that she does not whimper at that.  

 

* * *

Rey steps out into the courtyard. That’s a good word. She likes that one. The courtyard of the court of Ren, that… just happens to have the start of a…

_FUCK!_

Okay. She saw the sketch, but, she didn’t get the scale Jon was aiming at. Raised dias… This thing is…

She’s staring at it, moving forward, when Poe, who’s… got a welding torch in hand, and is literally helping the Stormtroopers build the thing, with BB-8 sitting next to him, going over some of the finer detail welds… sees her, and puts his torch down to join her.

“It’s going to be impressive,” he says to her.

She’s still staring at it. “It’s half as tall as I am.” And more than four meters across, and… It’s fucking _huge._

He’s happily nodding. “Oh yeah.” There’s a spark in his eye. “Kylo’s boy knows how to put on a show, I’ll give him that.”

She looks around more. There are… They can’t actually be Stormtroopers, not anymore. They aren’t in armor, and… Maintenance workers, maybe? There are a few of them rolling out some light gray carpet. Some are putting up new hangings, half of them are black or white with the Order Hexagon on it, and she’s assuming the other half have to be the flag of the K’Aran system. Another two are in the midst of setting up some sort of luncheon spot overlooking the galaxy. There’s the crew Poe was helping with, building a scaffolding for the dais, which, as Rey looks at it closer, she realizes is a series of graduated hexagons, with her not-a-throne at the top. A few others are painting, slapping a light gray on the walls, leaving the floor and the pillars black.

“Who’s in charge of the painting?”

“CT-6672,” Poe says gesturing to a man with a spray gun in one hand on an elevated platform, covering a part of the far wall.

“Do you think he’d paint Kylo’s office if I asked?”

“He seems like a decent chap, so assuming he knows who you are, he’d likely paint anything you asked. Here’s the real question, if you paint Kylo’s office whatever that gray is, will Jon get in a snit about somehow messing up his eventual grand design for they look of things?”

Rey thinks about it. “Maybe if he had a design in the works for the office, but right now I don’t think he does, and… It’s _so_ black in there. And… If I’m going to be… doing this… I want to be able to see what I’m doing.”

“It’s all black in there?”

“You haven’t seen?”

“When would I have?”

“Okay, come on.” She takes Poe into Kylo’s office, and then introduces C8.

Poe’s just staring at black on black on black, and shakes his head. “Yeah, this needs some color... or something.”

“C8… Can you write up an order to get the painters to do the walls, just the walls in here, the same color they’re doing the walls out there?”

“Of course, Lady Ren.”

“Don’t change anything else. Just the walls. I… It’ll be easy to change back if need be, right?”

Poe shrugs. “It’s just paint. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours of effort, likely less since they aren’t doing it by hand.”

Rey nods at that. Then she sighs. If she’s going to Lady Ren… well, she’ll Lady Ren.

They can yell at her later if it’s an issue.

 

 

* * *

Elevator. F-Deck. Tram…

She’s never ridden the tram before. When she and Kylo are here, they wander around, but they say in the one subsection, so…

Speaking of which. She checks, she’s in the 11th subsection, and… Good there are signs. Ten’s behind her. Twelve’s in front. So, Twenty-two’s got to be in front, too.

She watches one of the trams go by. They’re faster than walking, probably about jogging speed. It takes her a few moments to figure out where it’ll stop, and then she sprints ahead so she can be waiting with the other people for it.

And for a moment, she’s just a woman, in okay clothing, standing with a group of other people, but then she notices them start to smell her, and suddenly they’re all shifting away.

Okay, the ladies are right. She’s got to decontam her hair and skin before dealing with people.

She also notices them start to really look at her, and one of them recognizes her, and… Oh, that’s not good. Why does Lady Ren reek? What’s going on? Is this a problem? Is she just bad at hygiene? Rey can feel the gossip getting ready to start, and pulls up her do-not-recognize. The person who was wondering stares at her for another moment, blinks, squints, shakes her head, and then goes back to waiting for the tram. (And steps a little further away from Rey.)

 

 

* * *

Rey thought she had a sense of the scale of the _Supremacy._

Apparently, that was wrong.

Honestly wrong. There had been downed Star Destroyers on Jakku, and one of them was one of her favorite scavenging finds. Yes, before she was born, people had gone through it, taking, _almost_ everything of value. But… There were nooks and crannies, hidden corners, rooms collapsed into the sand, and crushed against rock, that bigger people just… either couldn’t imagine were there, or couldn’t get into.

But she could. And did. As much as a person could know that ship inside and out, she did.

Hell, she flew the _Falcon through_ that destroyer.

So, in her mind, the _Supremacy_ was, basically, the same ship, just with a different shape, and a bit bigger.

It’s not.

Not that she enjoyed doing it, but she could walk from one end of the Destroyer to the other in a bit more than an hour. Not quite two klicks, and if it had been in one piece, and not filled with sand and debris, she likely could have done it in less than fifteen minutes.

Sitting in the tram, moving much too slow for her liking, she’s getting the concept that the _Supremacy_ is _huge._

She’s staring at it, face set, determined. If she’s going to be the _Lady_ of this… ship… Order… _thing_ she needs to get to know it. Inside and out. This should be… maybe not her home. It’s too big for that. But her… domain.

Tomorrow… Okay, not tomorrow. The K’Aran delegation is _tomorrow_ (there’s a huge, sweeping pile of nervous, she beats that down.) The day after, an hour a day, at that speed she’ll be at this for years, but… she doesn’t have more free time than that. An hour a day, she’s going to spend exploring this ship and what’s here, and…

If this is hers… well, it should be _hers._

 

 

* * *

“I was starting to wonder if I needed to send out a set of guards to find you,” Mirina says when Rey gets within speaking distance.

Rey raises her eyebrows. “To see if I’d gotten lost or run off?”

“Either, both?”

Rey stares at Mirina. Who can and is _seeing_ her. Through her ‘do not recognize’ spell. “Do I look different to you?”

Mirina looks her up and down. “Should you?”

“Uh… No.”

“Good to know. Come.” Mirina hits the elevator button, and the group of people also looking to go up step aside as they notice Rey. Or smell her.

When the doors open, they’re the only two to step in. Mirina smirks a bit. “I suppose that’s one way to get a somewhat private conversation on this ship.”

Rey shrugs. “I suppose. You said you’ve got… soap…”

“Everything you could want or need. You’ll have a nice bath, maybe do some reading while you’re in there, and then we’ll begin.”

“Wonderful.” A wave of reticence washes over her, and Mirina catches it.

“It will be.”

The elevator to I-Deck is quick.  “What are on G and H?” Rey asks as they exit the elevator.

“Not much,” Mirina says.

Rey’s looking around at I. What she can see is a very long, very empty, mostly open space, with ten hallways spreading off of it. “Not much is true here, too.”

Mirina nods. “Now.” She nods down a gray hallway. “That won’t always be true.” They walk through the empty space. Rey figures it mirrors the market section two floors below them. Eventually, it may be filled with shops like the F-Deck. They continue to walk to the first of the hallways, and once there, Mirina says, “This section is apartments. Suites, really, leftovers from the Last Night/First Day celebrations. I had a few maintenance people work on mine a bit, modify it.” She taps a door that looks a lot like every other door they’ve passed, though there is a number on it, I-1-22:A-C.

“I-Deck, first Hallway, twenty-second subsection, apartment A… to C?”

“They knocked out some walls, rearranged a few things, made sure I had better light. You need good light to sew. Eventually, I’ll make sure I’ve got a professional space in the market area, but right now I need storage and work space, so…” she gestures as they enter.

Given how Jon’s rooms look, tidy, organized, attractive and bright, she was expecting that of Mirina’s.

But… This is a room filled with bolts of fabrics in what look like haphazard piles to Rey, several long tables, six droids whirling away, fingers… for lack of a better word, whizzing about on what Rey recognizes as the dress she’d brought to Mirina. Behind that, there’s another table, with more droids working on… She’s fairly sure it’s a men’s jacket, but beyond that, she’s clueless as to what it is.

“This is the work space. Usually, guests would come in the other door, but I wanted you to take a look at it.” She gestures to the dress. It was dove gray when she saw it last, and the under dress still is, though the over dress is black now.

“Jon mentioned the dye job to you.”

Mirina cocks her head. “No. If he thought of it, it was a good idea, though. This needed a bit more contrast.” She watches Rey look at the dress under construction. “Eventually, I’ll show you what the K’Aran women wear, and go over why we’re doing this, but I’ll start here, part of what we’re doing is showing off wealth. K’Aran men understand their women as… ornaments, for lack of a better word. In public, their job is to show off the money and power of the man in question.”

“I don’t want to know how much the…” she doesn’t know the name of half of the little sparkly gems on the dress, “embellishments cost, do I?”

“Let’s put it this way. This is my personal stash of _embellishments_ , and when this is done, I’ll take them back, and sub in paste ones, so the dress will still look right, but, as of right now, Kylo cannot afford this dress, and it's expensive enough I don’t want to charge the Order for it.”

Rey doesn’t wheeze at that. She does say, “And they’ll… know that. Just by looking?”

“They’ll expect it. I could possibly get paste gems past the K’Aar, but it’s certain that whomever is going with him as his chief diplomat _will_ be able to tell the difference. And in order to give due honor to your man, to show off his power through you, you need to be a testament to what he can provide you. Basically, if he’s willing to lay down the sort of credits that can buy this dress, something that you’d likely only wear once and never be seen in again, he’s more than flush enough to take care of any issues the K’Aran may have.”

Rye nods slowly. “I’m an… extension of his worth?”

“For this, yes. This’ll play differently in other situations, in some places he'll be an extension of  _your_ worth, but since they’re a straight up Patriarchy, a big part of what you’ll be doing is displaying the luxury in which Kylo can keep you.”

Rey bites her lip. “I’m… some sort of pampered pet?”

Mirina shoots her a very sharp look. “No. And, for that matter, neither are their women, but that’s what you, and they, are _supposed_ to be, _according to the men_. Since we’re going to drastically flip the script on them by removing Kylo from it, we’re going to go heavy on the look of the traditional mores, so they aren’t too horribly off foot. The more comfortable you can keep people, the easier they are to move in the direction you want them to go. So, at least visually, we’re going to signal that we… understand and appreciate their values.”

“Does that mean I just sit there… quietly… and let Jon do all the talking?”

Mirina snorts. “Absolutely not. You are _the queen._ Jon may be male, but he’s still, in the grand scheme of things, a servant. And allowing him to speak over you would be an insult to you, and thus, Kylo. You are there in his stead, as his proxy, and you will demand, and be regarded with, the same honor and deference your man would get. The only person at this thing approaching your rank, and since he’s here asking for our help, he is below you, is the K’Aar. And _everyone_ in that room will know that.”

“And if Kylo were there?”

“That would be a different story, but he’s not, so we don’t have to worry about it.”

“That’s where being a pampered pet comes in, doesn’t it?”

Mirina smiles a little. “Only so far as things look.”

Rey exhales long and slow, and glances at the dress. “It’s pretty.”

“Thank you. Now, let’s get you in the bath. I want you to get a shower, scrub everything first, then the bath, get a good long soak with the oils I’ve got laid aside, then back into the shower, scrub everything again, and then, and only then, out you get. The reports are on a datapad near the tub, so you can read while you soak. Ellie will be here shortly, and then we’ll begin getting you ready to be Lady Ren.”

Rey sighs. Then she squares her shoulders, and follows Mirina out of the work room, into an apartment that looks much more like what she was expecting. Lots of space, good light, overly lush and comfortable furniture, more pinks and rose and cream colors than she would have expected, but… It’s functional and attractive and polished.

The bathroom is even prettier. There is a shower, and a bath, and stacks of towels, and more soaps and shampoos that Rey’s ever before seen.

“Do you need help?”

“I think I’ve got this,” Rey says, picking up a small, squishy sphere of what she thinks might be one of the oils for the bath. “I’ll yell if I can’t figure out what to do.”

“Good. Take at least an hour. Try to relax. I’d offer you a glass of wine, but I don’t want you slipping in there. We’ll have supper when you’re done.”

“Okay.”

 

 

* * *

“Mistress Rey should be with Mistress Frakes in her rooms,” R4-6837, Jon’s secretary says to Threepio.

“Excellent. Give me the coordinates of her room, and I’ll join them there.”

“Of course, sir.” R4-6837 rattles off Mistress Frakes’s rooms.

“And how is the Lt. Colonel doing?”

“I’m sure he’s fine. He sent me a note to tell me that besides you, no one with a rank below Grand Marshal was allowed to disturb him today.”

“I’ll make sure to check in with him myself after I finish with Mistress Ren.”

“I’ll let him know that.”

“Thank you, R4-6837.”

“You’re welcome, General.”

 

* * *

It takes Threepio longer than he’d like to get to Mirinia Frakes’ rooms. Jon has floated the idea of turning ZZ, YY, and XX into the official meditation section of the _Supremacy_ and to a degree, especially now as he’s cruising through the _Supremacy,_ waiting to get to a meeting, he likes it.

That said… the I-Deck is better situated to the rest of the Officer’s corps. It’s larger. It doesn’t have its own flight deck, so that’s a drawback compared to where Jon’s thinking…

Tradeoffs. Realistically, it will be a long time before they’ll need more space than the three decks Jon’s thinking of can provide. Realistically, one of those new dreadnoughts will be done before they’re approaching crowded on those decks, so…

He gets to I:1:22: A-C, and just as he’s about to knock, he makes the decision, and then gives the orders. As soon as feasible, he’s moving his offices, and making sure there’s a collection of suites of rooms on ZZ for any visitors to the _Supremacy_. Time to consolidate. They can’t afford to be spending hours just moving from one side of the ship to the other.

Then he knocks.

 

* * *

Another shower feels good to Rey. The soap and shampoo… Does the job and then some. Like Kylo after the sonic, she feels sterilized. Nothing of… anything… still on her skin.

Soak for an hour or so. It seems like a waste of time, but she assumes Mirina knows what she’s talking about, and it’s not like Rey’s adverse to getting a soak. Granted, bath time is more fun with Kylo.

She sinks into the bath after the water’s full, and looks at the datapad. She does need to read what’s on it, but…

Her motivation to do so is as limp as her soaking wet hair.

She settles deeper into the water, and thinks of what Luke said. _More time in prayer…_

It won’t hurt.

And maybe it will help.

 

 

* * *

“Ah good, we’ve been—Where’s the food?” Mirina asks, and then chokes on as she realizes the droid on the other side of the door is not there to deliver their supper. She blinks slowly as she recognizes who is standing in front of her. _Of course._

“I have no idea where your food is, Madam. I am General See-Threepio, Order Diplomatic Service, and I’ve been told Mistress Rey is here. I’ve come to debrief her.”

Mirina steps back, allowing the golden droid to enter her rooms. Mostly, she’s just too shocked, at first, to react. A million news holos are flashing in her mind, and in the background of many of them, there stands a golden droid. Older memories, rise, too. Meetings. A pretty young woman, a secret, the golden droid, who discreetly, because he understood discretion, and secrets, asked for a private meeting.

A protocol droid, working with and near the senate, would, of course, know where his mistress should go for a… change in her wardrobe, should said change be necessary.

It’s as he’s stepping into her room, that Mirina clears the fog of too many memories to notice something. He just _introduced_ himself. Granted it’s been more than fifty years, and she’s not the woman she was when they last met. Time may have barely touched Threepio, alighting on his arm, which is red now, but it did not gently caress Mirina. She’s not the spitting image of who she was. And, it’s possible he only knows the _room_ he needed to go to. She wouldn’t put it past Jon to leave a little detail like _whose_ room Mistress Rey was in.

“Mirina Frakes, General.” She doesn’t offer a hand.

He nods briefly. “Madam Frakes. Is Mistress Rey here?”

Mirina’s watching him. It’s abundantly clear that he has absolutely _no_ idea who she is.

But he should.

Very interesting.

“She is, General. Right now she’s getting a bath. Then she’ll join us for supper and getting ready for tomorrow.”

Threepio nods at that, too.

Mirina watches him stand in her living room. “Didn’t you belong to Leia Organa?”

He glances at her. His voice is mild, neutral, but Mirina’s got the sense he might be annoyed. “I worked with General Organa, but, no, I did not _belong_ to her. I am a fully sentient non-biological being, and thus _cannot_ belong to someone else.”

“I see.” Well, his personality certainly changed over the years. See-Threepio, servant of Padme Amidala, a… gift from the husband she wasn’t supposed to have, wouldn’t have dared to speak to her that way. Fifty years did produce some changes, then, beyond the red arm.

“Do you? It seems many people see a metal body and assume a lack of conscious or will. Neither of which are true of me.”

Mirina mutters _simply lovely_ , and then says, “And let me guess, you’re on the forefront of droid rights, aren’t you?”

“It would be silly for me not to be. That said, if you are not, one might wonder why you appear to be helping to arrange a diplomatic meeting of a service that promoted a droid to General.”

“I find myself asking that often. Do you mind if I ask _who_ promoted you to your rank?”

“The Master himself.”

“Ah… You’ll forgive the question, but, if this is the third generation of Skywalkers you’ve served, in what way do you not belong to them?”

Threepio can’t glare, but she has the sense he’d like to. Then the sense of surprise. Skywalker. That’s got to him. Then Mirina blinks, hard. This is a _droid._ These are the kinds of reactions she picks up on _people_ without even having to think about them, but this is _not a person._

Except, apparently, he is. That throws her for a loop. Before he can even begin to answer she covers with, “Well, General, you’re a bit early. Rey will be out in half an hour or so. Ellie isn’t here, yet, and the food’s on order. But, please, be comfortable… Uh… Normally I’d offer you a drink and a seat, but…”

“I do not drink. I do sit.”

Mirina gestures to one of the chairs in her living space. “I’m still working on Rey’s dress and Jon’s uniform, if you don’t mind, I’ll go back to that.”

“I do not.”

 

 

* * *

Threepio watches Madam Frakes step out of her room. He takes the moment necessary to get himself sitting down, always a much longer and more drawn out endeavor than he’d prefer. There isn’t time for it tonight, but… Soon, he needs a long dip in a hot oil bath, and… He really needs to consider an upgrade to his knee, hip, and ankle joints if he’s to interface with humans regularly, and have them see him as an equal or superior.

And he’s distracting himself from what matters. Mirina Frakes. He’s been in the game too long to miss when someone recognizes him, but… He’s got _nothing_ on her.

At all.

But he _should._ That’s abundantly clear from how she reacted to him.

There’s no possible way she’d react to him like that if they don’t _know_ each other. And he _doesn’t._ He scans through his internal documents on her. Not much. Permission to come aboard. Assignment to this room. A work order to expand, and apparently, upgrade, it. He’s not certain if Jon bothered to look at what his mother did with this space before he signed off on it, nor does he think it matters. Much. He glances around, and scans the internal documents. Well, if accounting fussed about how much was spent on this space, they've had the good sense not to put it in the reports. 

He has a good database on Jon. Every step he’s made since he signed his name to a recruiting contract with the First Order. If he could look shocked, a mild expression of it would have crossed his face when he put together those glowing fitness evals from Jon’s commanding officer, and then the marriage license to said officer, but… Honestly, these things happen. Beyond that, Jon’s record is… well, spotless. He does his job. He does it well. He actually probably earned those glowing evals. And when Tactical Design was obliterated in the _Raddus_ attack on the _Supremacy_ (Threepio’s not sure how to feel about that.) Jon single-handedly rebuilt it from the ground up, to the point of apparently scrounging parts of broken machinery and droids to get his production lines back up.

That doesn’t tell him much, if anything about Marina, though.

He keeps looking. He has an older, and it takes him longer to find it, file on her husband. Apparently, at some point in the offing the First Order took custody of the Empire’s files, so he scans through them.

A competent, functional logistical officer. Nothing particularly noteworthy about him. His home was on Coruscant, where he must have lived with Mirina. There’s an address. Given where they lived they had more money than his pay grade suggested.

So, one of them was old money from the upper echelons of Coruscant.

That tells him very little about why he should know her. Possibly… He was there, in that general neighborhood, frequently, in the service of Bail, but… There’s nothing in his memory banks that involves Mirina.

Bail conjures another memory. _Three generations of Skywalkers._ He’s got the sense that _that_ should tell him a whole lot about why he should know her, except, of course, for the fact that, if you really stretched the name to the breaking point, he’s worked for _two generations of Skywalkers_.

He, unfortunately, also has the sense that Mirina did _not_ misspeak.

He supposes she could have meant Luke, Leia, and now Ben, but…

He knows she didn’t.

“Drat.” He says it quietly, contemplatively. When Artoo gets back, and they have a few free moments, he’s going to have to ask about the time before his memories begin.

 

 

* * *

A billion Reys stretching out into infinity before and behind her.

This time, an irked expression lights all of their faces, before they vanish, save for the real Rey.

She’s alone in the cave with the mirror. She steps toward it, seeing shadows. Herself… probably. It was her last time.

This time, when she touches the mirror, it resolves itself in an image of her in the Last Night gown, her hair up, makeup perfect. That holds for a moment. Then it’s her on Lirium, in her winter gear. Her in the desert, wind whipping the drapes of her tunic. It settles on her, here, now, wet, naked, alone.

“It’s always me.” She looks around, and it’s just her, the cave, and the mirror.

She stares at the ceiling, exasperation pouring out of her. “There’s supposed to be guidance! I’m supposed to feel… settled! Like… you’ve got a plan for me, or something!” Her voice echoes in the cave as she stands there, staring at herself.

Guidance, settled, they don’t come. Wet, pruney toes and fingers do.

A heady desire to be able to talk to Kylo about this, that comes, too. His own experience with praying to the Force, what he’s seen, and… hell, letting him see it and see if he’s got any insight, because just her… Right now, it’s doing nothing for her.

She scrubs again, wraps her hair in the towel, and her body in a robe, and goes out to face the Ladies.

 

 

* * *

It’s not just the ladies. Though Ellie and Mirina are there. Threepio is, too.

She smiles, genuinely, to see him.

“Mistress Ren.”

“I see we’re being formal, General.”

He glances to Mirina and Ellie, and it’s clear he’s thinking that they are not in private.

Rey understands, nods, and says, “Okay. Lady Ren, reporting for duty, now what?”

Mirina’s apparently got the stage first. In her living room, where they’re sitting, she has a large… Rey’s not sure, it looks a bit like a datapad bolted to a wall, but she doesn’t think that’s a thing. Whatever it is, Mirina waves at it, it turns on, and there are images of women on it.

“From everything I can tell, this is K’Aran high fashion for women.”

“Can tell?” Ellie asks.

“They don’t exactly interact much with the wider galaxy, so it took some doing to find images. These are internal, from their own news and entertainment services, and since I don’t speak the language, and the—“

“You’re watching a gathering of the royal family from three years ago. It’s coming of age ceremony for the twin princes,” Threepio says. “Adequate translators should never be a problem on this ship. Just ask your son for one, and you’ll have it.”

“Noted,” Mirina says.

The ladies in the pictures are small, plump, round of hip and belly and breast. If Rey knew the word voluptuous, she might apply it to the ladies. Two of them are visibly round with child. Before Mirina can start talking about the clothing, Threepio adds, “Weight and fertility are both status symbols in this culture, both for the woman in question, and as a reflection on her man. We have all of this in our databases. Perhaps, if there is a next time, you might attempt to work directly with our department,” Threepio adds.

Mirina glances at him, but doesn’t actually say anything to that. She is surprised to see that _General_ Threepio’s thorough enough to engage in a culture on that level.

“Is everyone going to be…” Rey’s trying not to wince. Between decades of near starvation and Plutt, anything with enough flesh to form large floppy rolls just… gets to her. “plump?”

“Only the women. A woman who is well-fed, preferably pregnant, with many other children, and well-dressed is a woman whose husband is lavishly providing for her. All of her needs have been met, and any want she might desire is available,” Threepio says.

Rey glares at the image. Her flat, muscly body is already failing miserably at this.

“None of that,” Ellie replies. “We’re showing them we understand their culture, not that we’re members of it. Do you have any images of the men?”

“I didn’t think I’d need one,” Mirina says.

“They are seafaring, and nomadic culture. This image is from the high fashion, colder latitude, winter season. During the warmer months, they move closer to the equator, and clothing becomes more casual. High necked tunics, trousers, boots, and vests are popular in more formal settings for men. In the more relaxed seasons, kilts or a kaftan is considered appropriate menswear.”

Mirina’s just _staring_ at Threepio. “You pay attention to all of this?”

“Madam, I can process billions of pieces of information per second, there’s no reason for me _not_ to ‘pay attention’ to details like this. Unlike a human, I don’t have to prioritize in order to prevent myself from becoming swamped in details.”

Ellie decides that now’s a really good time to get attention back to Rey, and why they’re doing this. “You are going in as a warrior queen, Rey. We want to indicate we’re aware of their values, and that some of ours overlap, but if you look too much like one of their women, they’ll disregard you as anything other than a gem in Kylo’s crown.”

That helps, some. Rey relaxes, a little.

“Okay,” Ellie continues, “look at the image. The clothing, not the ladies under them. What do you see?”

Rey looks. “Uh… Okay… They’re wearing gowns. They cover from the neck to the ground. Some sort of coat over the gown. Sparkly. There are a lot of little gems on the dresses and coats?”

Mirina says, “Yes. And they’re made of a fabric I can’t get my hands on, but is similar to slenisan silk.”

“Which my dress is made of?”

“Lords, no!” Mirina laughs at the idea. “The spiders that spin that silk only produce enough for three meters a year. We don’t have the resources to buy it.”

“And we don’t have the pull to borrow it, either,” Ellie adds. “No, your dress is silk, from silk worms, but the gems, and the patterning on the hem and sleeves are similar and so is the cut. Yours is a little lower cut to help show off your Order pendant, but otherwise the shape is similar.”

“Oh.” Rey looks at the dresses. “So this… Helps them feel more comfortable?”

“We certainly hope so, Mistress,” Threepio says. “We’re also doing our best to provide them with something approaching local food customs when they’re here.”

“Okay, familiar, but not identical,” Rey says.

“Exactly,” Mirina replies.

“Great. So… dress me up, then what? How do I… warrior queen?”

Ellie smiles at this. “For the most part, just be yourself in a fancy dress. They’ve come to us because they need strength, and it’s your job to make sure they understand that no matter what, we’ve got it, and that we’re willing to sell it to them.”

Rey inclines her head a bit.

Mirina adds, “You’ve survived the desert and neglect, fought Kylo and beat him, fought the Praetorian guard and won, all you have to do is let that shine through. Help them to see that, though you are a woman in a pretty dress, you can give them what they need.”

“And what do they need?” Rey knows that’s in the datapads she was supposed to be reading in the bath, but she hasn’t read them, yet.

“In the short term, someone from the outside to pick which grandson will succeed the K’Aar. In the longer term, the power to enforce the succession,” Threepio replies. “Here, let us begin at the beginning, what you’ll be doing, specifically and concretely, tomorrow. In my experience, it’s always easier to make plans and deal with whatever is coming your way, when you know as much as you can about it.”

Rey nods. “Thank you, General.”

“You’re welcome, Mistress. First and foremost, Galactic Standard is not their primary language, though everyone visiting us will speak it perfectly, and should one of them say something, in your hearing, in anything other than Galactic Standard it is a direct insult and should be treated as such.”

Rey nods. “Okay. How do I… respond to an insult?”

“That, Mistress Rey, depends on the severity of the insult. For something like that, ignore the first time, and if there’s a second, a direct, open-handed, slap across the face will suffice.”

Rey’s eyebrows raise. Then she smiles a little. “I think I can handle that.”

Threepio continues, “If there’s a third, and unless they’re looking to start a war with us, there won’t be a third, you may break the nose of the person who insults you.”

“I can really handle that. Should I have my staff at hand for this?” Fancy, expensive dress _and_ her lightstaff… That feels like an… aesthetic… that’s the word Kylo would use… she can get behind.

“In other circumstances, yes,” Threepio replies. “If we were doing this on their territory, you absolutely would be armed, but since boilerplate rules of the Order is that _no one_ gets on this ship armed, you won’t have any visible weapons on you.”

“Ah.” Rey’s a little disappointed by that, but she can understand why they don’t let armed guests on the _Supremacy._

“You won’t have any weapons on you, period,” Mirina says. “We’re already pushing their boundaries with you on that chair, showing up armed for something like this, especially since this isn’t a culture where people wear ceremonial arms, would be an insult to them. A suggestion that we don’t consider them to be coming here in good faith.”

“There will however, be several security people in the room, and they will be armed to the teeth, and possibly have weapons between their teeth,” Ellie adds.

Threepio cocks his head. That seems likely. “Now, you will already be on your throne when the K’Aran delegation will be led in. This moment is a greeting from you, Mistress of the Order, to Urathan, K’Aar of the K’Aran. Everyone else in both groups will remain silent. Neither of you will bow, though both of you will nod to the other, indicating that this is a meeting of equals, though, of course, everyone in the room knows that you are extending equality as a courtesy. We outgun and outpower the K’Aran system by lightyears. It’s true they have more people, but we have more guns.”

Rey’s nodding. “What happens after we nod?”

“You will say, ‘K’rith, hlamay onna imir j’ketta wol.’”

Rey sighs, loudly, and then mimics Threepio’s words. “What do they mean?”

“Roughly, ‘Welcome esteemed visitor, take comfort in our holdings.’”

“Exactly?”

“’Welcome Great Shark, he who tames the waves, feast upon our whales.’ Their first planet is mostly ocean, and the idioms of a primarily seafaring people have stuck.”

Rey nods, not knowing what a whale is and only sketchy on the concept of sharks.

“From then, you’ll move to introduce everyone else.”

“I can do that…” Then something occurs to Rey. “Who is going to be at this?”

“Colonel Jefferies and I will be meeting with the K’Arans at their rooms and bringing them to the meeting, so you’ll be introducing  Lt. Colonel Frakes, though I likely wouldn’t mention his rank, it’s a bit low for a gathering like this. There will be a few other members of the Diplomatic Corps in tow, but they will be observing, not part of the official gathering.”

That springs a few questions in Rey’s mind, first of all, “What about Poe?”

“Is Master Dameron here?” Threepio looks like he really would have appreciated a briefing on that.

“Yes, and he’ll be joining the gathering. Jon’s putting him in charge of the boys…”

Threepio nods. “That makes sense. We do not have Master Ren, so… Introductions by rank, and consider Master Dameron equivalent to Jon. Introduce Jon first, because this is an Order ship.”

“Whose rank I’m not mentioning.”

“Not unless he’s got the sense to stick a Grand Marshal’s stripe on his sleeve between now and then.”

“No stripe. No stripes, at all, he’s redesigned the whole look, but yes, I’ve just about finished up a Grand Marshall’s formal dress uniform,” Mirina adds. “That was the second table you saw when you came in,” she says to Rey.

Rey’s nodding, making herself memorize this.

Ellie can see what she’s doing. “We’ll also have a step by step cheat sheet for you. You don’t have to memorize it all in one go.”

“Good.” That lets Rey get to her second question. She gestures to Ellie, “You won’t be there?”

“Oh no. Not Pat or Josh, either.”

Threepio takes over. “Part of why they are seeking us out, is that they are looking for strength, and power, and _youth._ The current K’Aar is seventy-three years old. The average male K’Aran lives to seventy. He is in good health for his age, but he is, by their standards, _old._ They are seeking the promise of people who are young enough to come up with a plan, and still be around ten years from now when we’re done with it. Unfortunately—“ He glances to Ellie.

“Don’t fret, General. We both know that Pat and I have lived beyond our expected lifetimes and then some. And we know that ten year plans are a thing we’re making mostly for our children and grandchildren. But while these bodies consent to draw breath, and our minds continue to stay sharp, we are willing and eager to serve.”

Threepio inclines his head. “Will you forgive me if I say, your reputation indicates _serve_ is not exactly what you and your man do?”

“Will you somehow figure a way to scroll time back and take those words out of the air if I say, no?”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Exactly.” She glances to Rey, “and that’s how _polite_ insults work. No slaps across the face for that, but we both know exactly what we’ve said to each other.”

Threepio cocks his head. “Indeed. That said, the sentient who thinks you serve anything other than yourself is too stupid or innocent to be on this level, so…” And it’s clear that’s a warning, for Rey.

Ellie smiles. “I see we understand each other, perfectly, General.”

Rey makes herself not offer up a long, drawn out sigh. “After I introduce everyone?”

“Ah, yes. After our introductions. Their side will introduce their people. Then I assume Master Dameron will take the boys and their handlers and… I don’t know what they’re going to do. The original plan was Master Ren strolling with them around a few of the more impressive flight decks, showing off a few of the CityKillers, and talking with them. I imagine Master Dameron will engage in a variation on that, while you, Jon, the K’Aar, Ilnor K’Rith, his diplomatic head, and my connection to the K’Aran dynasty, and I will discuss the boys outside of their hearing, and then have lunch, talking about what they think the ideal solution for the problem is.”

“Are we… supposed to just give them his idea solution?”

Threepio shakes his head. “Not necessarily. We need to take it into account, understand what they’re hoping for, but if we can find something better, they will appreciate it. Part of getting us into play is to see what someone who doesn’t have a vested interest in any given outcome can come up with, and part of it is making sure any solution we come up with, we can enforce.

“If we settle on one son, and the warlords decide to challenge that, it’s our job to enforce our settlement. So, the more difficult it looks to be to enforce our settlement, the more expensive this job becomes for us.”

“And we want to make money on it, not spend it?” Rey asks.

“Exactly. The hope is that we’ll decide on a solution, send men to the K’Aran system to keep an eye on things and report back, and if all goes well, they’ll spend a quiet ten years there, managing the recruiting stations, keeping an eye on things, and we’ll happily invest our income. If they don’t, we’ll be getting the call and coming in, armada at the ready, backing whatever side we agreed to back.”

Rey nods at that. “Okay. Lunch. Talk things over. Then what?”

“Then the boys will join us. They will be formally presented to you. Now, this was supposed to be the time that Master Ren would have been getting to know them, but Master Dameron is doing it while you’re speaking with the K’Aar, so it’s likely we’ll be moving directly to the part where we chat with our own people, and come up with a plan of attack, so to speak.

“Then we’ll offer it up to them. They’ll have as much time to deliberate on our offer as they like, though we’ve been told they’ll likely decide in less than an hour. Quickness of thought, and decisive action are also both considered signs of great man in their culture. ‘Dithering’ is looked down upon as a weakness.”

Ellie smiles a bit at that. “Cultures that value _fast, decisive_ action are cultures that you can generally outfight if you survive the first few battles.”

Threepio nods. “Generally, yes. Long-term strategic thinking, unless it comes to them in a lightning strike, is not their strong suit. But, we are hoping we won’t ever have to fight them. And if we do, as of this point we so massively outgun them that a battle against them really shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”

“Citykillers?” Rey asks.

“Citykillers. They have a large space navy, with plentiful fighter pilots, but we only have to get fifty or so Citykillers through their defenses to utterly destroy their manufacturing base and economy.” And, as if he didn’t just rattle off how they could end the K’Aran system, Threepio continues with, “Once we’ve given our solution, and they’ve accepted or rejected it, we’ll finish off with a formal dinner. They’ll spend the night. In the morning, you’ll see them off, and they’ll return to the K’Aran system, hopefully with a signed deal, and with even more luck, we’ll be sending troops, and getting credits back, in the next few days.”

“That simple,” Rey says.

Ellie gives her hand a little squeeze. “Easy as pie.”

“Aren’t pies rather complicated to cook?” Rey asks. She’s eaten some, but never made one.

Mirina smirks a bit. “Exactly.”

 

 

* * *

They hear a quiet snick sound, followed by a louder buzz, and then Mirina gets up to check on the sewing droids. A moment later, she’s back with Rey’s dress draped over her arm.

“Well, let’s see how it looks.” She hands it over and Rey heads back to Mirina’s room to try the dress on.

It’s heavy. The gems and embroidery, which as she looks closely at it is motifs of some sort of delicate butterfly and intricate knots in… silver maybe? It’s a bright shiny silver color. Tiny emeralds and pearls and… embellishments… adorn the knots and butterflies, make them sparkle in the dim light of Mirina’s rooms.

Rey’s nervous about touching this, afraid she might damage it somehow, but… She grits her teeth. If she breaks it, well, they shouldn’t have put her in something so expensive anyway.

She drops the robe on the floor, and pulls the under dress on. It’s soft. She likes that. Heavy but _soft._ It covers from her chest to the floor. Her Order of the Maji pendent is visible, but she doesn’t have much, she presses her breasts up and together, any… real cleavage. Not without the help of a bra or something.

The overdress is a bit rougher, the fabric has a lightly nubby texture. The sleeves are very long. If she’s supposed to be a warrior queen… No one in their right mind would wear something like this to attempt to fight in. It’s… floppy and distracting, and it would get in the way.

But, that’s likely part of the point. The Warrior Queen on her own throne doesn’t need to fight. She’ll fight when she’s not in the midst of her own territory.

That feels likely to be true.

Put this on, stand up, welcome guests, sit on her throne, talk to people, listen, and then offer a suggestion. This shouldn’t be _that_ difficult.

Add in her Force skills… Anything the K’Aar doesn’t want to say about his grandsons, and likely anything those grandsons don’t want her to know… She should find them fairly easily.

So… find the right answer… If there is a right answer… That’s a sick-making thought, maybe, like healing, there is no right answer. This whole thing is just going to be a collection of tradeoffs. Rey sighs at that, fairly sure that _that’s_ a lesson she’s learned.

No right answers, just tradeoffs. 

She stares at herself in the mirror, wishing that she could rest assured in the idea of _right._

* * *

 

 

“Oh… Mistress,” Threepio’s voice is soft when Rey comes out in her gown. He might not have much use for Kylo, as Kylo, but as the man who puts Rey into position to do things like this… As… a continuation of the Organa line, and the chance for a history that was killed much too early to finally come to fruition...

For that, he can tolerate a lot of Kylo.

Especially if he doesn’t have to personally interact with him.

“General,” Rey says, a little half smile, half grimace on her face. She can feel Ellie and Mirina are looking at her critically, expecting to find a way to improve the image. But Threepio is just enjoying this.

“Taking you back in time, General?” Mirina asks.

Rey offers Threepio a curious look when he nods. “The cut is different, of course, and the hair much less elaborate, but, if you could have stood by them, you would have looked like you belonged beside Leia and Breha.”

“The Pacifist Queen who raised a spy turned general, who became the mother-in-law to a warrior queen,” Ellie says.

His voice is soft, but definitive as he says, “Who raised a leader. Princess, Senator, General… she was always a leader. The title didn’t matter.” He can’t smile to Rey, but she feels the warmth of it, the grimace drops from her face. “The title was just there to help other people understand who they were talking to, but it always came down to her internal, and I hope to think, eternal, _Leia_. And I do see much of that shining through you right now.”

Rey smiles at him, feeling her eyes flush hot, and blinking she says, “Thank you.”

“You are welcome, Mistress. Now, let us begin on the backstory of the potential K’Aran heirs…”


	17. The Grand Marshall and The Commander

2/5/2

 

Jon wakes up as second shift slips into third.

 

 

His head thuds back onto his pillow, hoping he might grab another hour or two of sleep. Rest now, eat, work through the night, grab a stim in the morning, and crash again after the formal diner.

He’s had longer days.

But he’s awake, his brain is buzzing, there are things he hasn’t checked in on yet, and…

His eyes peel open, and he’s up.

 

 

* * *

Details… So many details. Threepio’s got Rey. Good. Dress done. Great. His mom says he’s got his new dress uniform ready to go, too. Excellent. The K’Aran delegation is… His secretary tracks that down for him as he’s heading toward the throne room. Fourteen hours away… All right.

Food? He checks in with the Chef of the _Supremacy,_ who sounds a bit miffed to be dealing with him. Possibly because, technically, at least right now, he outranks Jon, and doesn’t appreciate him micro-managing, but… Well, he’s the fucking Grand Marshall, or he will be as soon as he puts that new uniform on, and he’ll micro-manage as he sees fit.

Food is prepped and will be ready to go as necessary. When the K’Arans get here, they’ll be greeted by Colonel Jefferies and General Threepio, led to their suite… (He reroutes himself to make sure he visits the suite before going to down Kylo’s throne room) offered refreshments and the time to settle themselves.

He checks is chrono. Eighteen hours until he, and Rey, and Poe will formally meet the K’Arans.

By then, he’ll have all of his players up and ready to go… Except… Shit. He doesn’t have anything to put Poe in yet, and he hasn’t seen the ‘suit’ Poe doesn’t think he’ll think is good enough.

Okay… He comms his second-in-command, who is technically the head of Tactical Design these days, and isn’t, actually, supposed to be doing diplomacy stuff, but… He needs more people, and he doesn’t have them, yet. “Hey, Em, can you get my bolts of 12-45-6, 45-2-54, and 28-9-12 to my rooms.”

“Sure, Boss. New project?”

“Something like that.”

“Another suit for the Master?” After all those are _good_ fabrics. Not the sort of thing you’d generally use for armor. “You expanding his palette?”

“Nah, this one’s not for him. He’s too cool toned for those colors. Ummm…” He rubs his hand through his hair… “Get me the box with the metal samples in it. The fancy ones, okay? And my tin snips and files.”

“I can do that. What are you planning?”

“Not entirely sure yet, but I’ll show you pictures soon.”

“Good.”

“Oh, and… the bolt of 163-09-88.”

“You’re making something with leather?”

Jon sighs. “Maybe. With any luck it won’t be a disaster.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. I need it.”

 

 

* * *

Jon double, and then triple, checks the K’Aran suite. It _screams_ wealth. Everything in the place is beyond sleek, gilded, (metaphorically if not literally, though he’s noticing silver accents abound) and rare. He smiles a bit, they’ve even got flowers in the bedrooms.

 

 

Flowers…

He’s on his comm, “Threepio, did you check the flowers in—“

“Yes, Jon, I did.”

“Good. Didn’t want any surprises like last time.”

“The only surprise waiting for you is how Rey’s going to look in the dress, and I’m willing to say it’ll be a pleasant one.”

“Good, that’s the kind of surprise I want. I take it you’re with Mom, Rey, and Ellie right now?”

“I am. We’re going over everything we know about everyone attending the meeting. We should wrap that up in a few hours, and after that I think we’re going to leave Rey to have some time on her own.”

He hears a soft, muffled voice in the background of the comm. He assumes that’s Rey agreeing to time on her own.

“Okay, good. Comm me if you need me. I’m off to check on the throne room that isn’t.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell Rey, Poe and I will be at Mom’s room at two past the start of second shift tomorrow.”

“I will.” He comms off with Threepio and begins the trek to the not-a-throne-room.

 

 

* * *

The landing bay the K’Aran delegation will land at is twenty-one levels below the floor their suite is on. It will take time to get from the one to the other, though it’s mostly a long elevator ride.

That said, the trek from their suite to Kylo’s throne room is an hour and a half, mostly through the K-Deck. It’s not the fastest way to get from their suite to Kylo’s rooms, but it does involve them going through the main fighter deck. Fifty-eight point six klicks of fighters, more fighters, additional fighters, and then, even more fighters should do an adequate job of showing off that, if needs be, they can bring quite a bit of “fight” to a fight.

And, of course, that’s just the _main_ fighter deck. The view from the floor of K-Deck allows you to see up to O-Deck. And each of those floors is also stuffed full of anything and everything that a good pilot can use to kill people.

And, of course, those are just the _fighters._ Bombers, CityKillers, land weaponry, all of that is elsewhere.

They want strength, well, they’re gonna walk through a metric shit ton of it.

He’s grinning a little at that, somewhat wishing he was going to be joining them on this walk, but when he planned this, he’d been intending to be keeping Kylo in the right mood for this, and now he’s got Rey, so… Maybe next time he’ll get to be a part of the group that shows off the _Supremacy._

He shrugs a bit. Besides, all he actually knows about the ships around him is they look cool and kill things. Force forbid they ask him any real questions about this stuff.

 

 

* * *

Ninety-six minutes. Longer than Jon wanted to spend on the trek, but he also wants to make sure that every step of this is good to go, and it is.

The scale alone of this place should sell what they’re offering more than any response they could come up with.

They want power?

They want big?

Oh, he’s gonna give it to them.

Jon closes his eyes as the elevator door to the throne room opens, and then, once it’s full open, he opens his eyes and sighs.

A billion kilos fall off his shoulders.

The walls are light gray. The pillars and doors are still black. The carpet is gray, it looks rich and lush, glinting a bit, like the not-quite-velvet it is. From the close wall, the Order’s hex in black and white hangs, interspersed with the K’Aran’s blues and greens. He’s been told the large golden thing in the middle of the blue and green is a narwhal, but he’s got no idea what, other than that golden thing, a narwhal might be.

Rey’s dais and throne… The dais rises not quite a meter off the floor, and it’s gleaming polished black hexagons with white edges, just like the Order hex. Rey’s throne… He’s very satisfied to see it came out properly. The chair itself is stained ebon wood, whorls of black and gray. (He took his inspiration from Kylo’s marriage band.) The seat is white. Rey in her black and gray should pop against the light color.

The table is set. Order black and white blended with K’Aran greens and blues.

There are ornamental spheres of water floating around through the courtyard, with various water living critters in them.

He double checks the drinks menu… Yes. Perfect. The preferred cocktails of the K’Aar are on rotation and ready to go.

In fact, everything in here looks so perfect, and so ready, and… He checks his chrono. They should still be working. That makes him wonder if just adding Poe to the work crew sped them up this much.

He glances around again. The throne room is empty.

And… He appears to have lost Poe.

_Shit._

* * *

“Poe?”

Poe’s eyeing the walls of Kylo’s office when he gets Jon’s voice on his comm. “Hey buddy. Have a good nap?”

Jon sounds slightly irked by that question. “Yes, lovely. Where are you?”

Poe laughs. “Afraid you lost me?”

“Well… Yes, actually. It’s a huge ship.”

“Where are you?”

“Throne room.”

“Then walk through the door to his office, and see what happens when you let Lady Ren do some Lady Renning.”

Jon’s not sure if he’s feeling the floor dropping out under his feet or not. They aren’t entertaining the K’Aran in there, but this is where everyone on their side of it will be gathering for the chat and decide what they’re going to offer— “Oh.”

Poe’s grinning at him, spattered with pain, and he’s got a crew of maintenance workers cleaning up a painting project as a small droid and C8 appear to be chatting about something. “Rey decided to do the walls to match.”

Jon’s looking around. “This is… nice.” He sees C8. _Really_ sees him. The droid usually blends into the background so thoroughly it’s easy to miss him, but not anymore.

 

 

“Yeah, really lightens up the mood of the place.”

“You… got all of this done?”

Poe nods to the crew. “We did. They’re good men. One of my best friends used to do maintenance on this ship, and… whatever else is true about you guys, you train men to fix things right, and do it fast. I just offered up a few dirty tricks learned having to scrap things together on the fly.”

Jon blinks at that. “Okay.” He looks around again. Then he looks at Poe. Dirty, little sweaty, paint in his hair and on his clothing, grease on his hands from putting together the dais. He mentally bites his lip and whimpers, but doesn’t let it get to his face.

Poe who also doesn’t have an outfit for tomorrow. Work. Work that’s got to happen, fast. “I think we’ve got to get moving from here,” Jon says.

Poe nods at that, and then says, “Yx, you guys got it from here?”

YX-4489 waves him off. “Sure Commander. Pleasure working with you.”

“And you. I’ll say 'Hi' to Finn for you.”

“Thank you.”

He turns back to Jon, smiles, and says, “I’m all yours.”

“Commander?” Jon asks as they head out of the office.

“Like I said, that’s the one that mattered to me.”

Jon nods.

Poe adds, “Plus, on this ship, Master Poe’s kind of asking to get my ass kicked. It’s one thing if I’m with the kids. Hell, more than half of them just call me Poe. But here especially… Commander’ll do me just fine.”

“I think we’re going to introduce you to the K’Aran delegation as Master Dameron of the Maji.”

“I can live with that. But with Kylo’s men, I don’t need to be worming into his territory.”

That makes sense to Jon.

 

 

* * *

As they’re walking through the F-Deck, Poe says, “So, what’s the plan for tonight? The throne room’s been beaten into submission. I’m sure most of the details are done or in motion. Even the napkins are folded to spec. So, now… Kick back, relax, have a drink and shoot the shit until morning?”

Jon laughs, hard, at that.

“Yeah, maybe for you.” He gestures to the F-deck. “Let me see what you’ve got in the way of a suit, and then you’re free.”

“What’ll you be doing?”

“Depending on how close to right you were with, ‘not that I’d think’ on the decent suit front, I may be making one for you. Otherwise I’ll be going over every detail of tomorrow, twice, and likely popping in on my mom to double check on Rey.”

“Jon, you’ve got to relax, or you’re going to burst a blood vessel.”

The look on Jon's face might be called a smile, or a grimace, depending on how well you knew him. “That’s what the day after tomorrow is for. Or are you going to tell me you aren’t tense on the eve of a battle?”

Poe bats that away. “Well, for a lot of them, they didn’t waltz up ahead of time and tell me they were coming, but, sure, when I knew… Before is tense. Or doing stupid shit to fight tense. During is…” Poe rolls his lips together, really looking at Jon, and then shakes his head. “Closest you’ve ever been to a fight was basic training, wasn’t it?”

“I watched Kylo shove a lightsaber through a man’s balls from about six meters away. Then he snapped his neck while he was writhing on the floor, hurting too badly to scream. Is that close enough?”

Poe winces. That’s not what he’d call a fight. He’d likely call that a murder, but he’s assuming Kylo had a good reason for it. “I’m sure that made sense to him, but…” He cringes.

“Multiply that by the fifty thousand other people who watched him do it. And it made sense to him because the guy was fucking the trainees, whether they wanted to, or not.”

“Ah. Yeah. Well…” Not a murder then. He doesn’t have the full story on that, but he knows enough about what happened on Jakku to put the dots together and figure that’s going to be a sensitive topic for Rey and anyone who loves her. “That’s a… way to make sure that doesn’t happen again, I guess.”

“On the most literal level of that one trainer isn’t going to do it again, yes, indeed. I’ve been told training is getting better, but that’s not my department. And, yes, besides watching Kylo fight, the last time I got into a fight, I was in basic training, and even then, my preferred weapon was a sniper’s rifle.”

Poe traces his eyes over Jon. Keen eye, good with detail, likely given what he does, good with math and distances, patient. “I can see that. And the reason I brought it up is… well, unless you’ve really been in one, you can’t, not really, get it, but… You’re not tense or nervous or… anything… when you’re fighting. It’s…” Poe smiles a little, again. “It’s fucking perfect, is what it is, and I know we’re not supposed to say that, but…” He looks a little wistful. “Nothing else feels like it. After, when the adrenaline crashes, and you get shaky, and you love all your loves that little bit more because you lived and they did, too. That’s different. That’s when you get nervous, and that’s when you party that much harder just because you can. But during…” he sighs.

“I get some of that. Just, playing for different stakes.”

“What’s on the table for us?”

“If we do this well, come up with a plan they like, manage to get them to stick around long enough for us to give them a plan—“

“You think they’re going to take one look at Rey and leave?”

“I’m afraid they might. It’s not a society where women do things like this, but… they are a birth right monarchy, and she’s the closest thing I’ve got to something like the kind of succession they might have, for Kylo, so… Anyway, if they don’t bugger off when they see her, and they do take our advice, we get eight billion credits, a good relationship with the K’Aran, and with any luck, more of these contracts.”

Poe whistles slow and low. “That’s a hell of a hand.”

“And that’s why, the day after tomorrow, I can relax.” 

 

 

* * *

“Food?” Poe asks as they continue to walk through the F-Deck. He’s eyeing the eateries and cafes.

“I’ll order for us. You get into my shower, get cleaned up, show me the suit on you, and by the time that’s done, food’ll be up, and we can eat and talk and work.”

“Sounds like a date.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “I really hope not.”

Poe smirks at that. “Good.”

Jon nods to the end of the market zone, and the third hallway from the aftword side. “That one is mine.”

Poe nods back at him. “I remember.”

“Good with directions.”

“I bloody well have to be. Not like space has a lot of landmarks. And the ones that it does have, _move._ ”

“Isn’t that why you’ve got the navi?” Jon asks, looking at BB trailing beside Poe.

BB-8 chirps at him.

“He didn’t mean it, buddy. He just doesn’t know any better.” Poe says to BB, and to Jon he says, “BB’s a hell of a lot more than a navi program. But yes, he does that, too. Still the navi is for making sure you get where you want to go. If you’re dog-fighting…”

“Right. Of course. It’s probably really easy to get disoriented in space zipping around.”

“ _Really._ ”

They take a few more steps. “What do you want to eat?” Jon asks.

“I’m easy. I like pretty much everything.” Poe thinks about it, and about tomorrow. He sighs. “Okay, nothing more than medium level heat, or I’ll be up all night with heartburn. Can’t toss back the chilies like I used to.”

Jon smirks at that. He remembers a similar conversation with Lane. “Not twenty-two any more.”

“For which, most of the time, I’m grateful.”

“Most of the time. I suppose tomorrow will be a reminder of all the fun twenty-two was, or wasn’t.”

“I’m not saying twenty-two wasn’t fun.” Though Jon gets the sense Poe’s lying about that. “But I wouldn’t go back.”

Jon nods at that. “I had a blast at twenty-two. Mom hadn’t booted me out yet, so I was mostly going to parties and sewing. Nothing darker or deeper than if I’d gotten a seam right, or if the client liked the sketch, and who I was going to take to bed.”

“Fun and easy.”

“Fun and easy, and kind of boring, and…” Jon smiles at him a little. “I wouldn’t go back. Twenty-five or seven, maybe, but not twenty-two.”

Poe wiggles his hand a bit to indicate he understands that. 

 

* * *

Once they get back to Jon’s place, there’s a moment of standing around followed by Jon sort of jerking into motion. “Refresher, right. You don’t want to grab your suit, go all the way back to your ship, and then back here again.”

“Not unless you’re looking to kill two and a half hours.”

“I’d really rather not.”

“In the morning, I saw you’ve got something in there, but… Shower? Sonic? I didn’t see any controls, so…”

Jon leads him toward his bathroom. “Yeah, it’s not tricky once you know how to work it, but the first time, someone’s got to show you how to. I’ve got water and sonic. Sonic is free. We’ve got to pay for water, but… I just prefer it.”

Poe smiles at that. “My current ship’s got a shower. Micah's got a hetabex fuel conversion system, so I’ve got all the water I could want, but everything before that had a sonic or was too small for anything but a hygiene pack, and… that first few minutes under real water after, say, six months of living in a ship…”

“I _know_.” Jon grins at him on that one. “Trainees only have access to a sonic, and when I just started here, I had better things to use my credits on.” He glances at the bag Poe had over his shoulder when he joined them. “You have your kit in there?”

Poe winces a bit. He’s got his suit in there, because he was supposed to show it to Jon. And he’s always got a change of clothing in there and a toothbrush, because he’s never entirely sure when he’ll need them, but it hadn’t occurred to him there’d be a several hour commute back and forth to his ship, so the rest of his gear is in his refresher, in there. “Shit, no. Will I put you out if I use yours?”

“No.” Jon opens the door to the refresher. He crosses to the sink, grabs his razor and quickly switches out the old blade for a fresh one. “Everything else you could need is in there,” he gestures to the glass enclosed shower. Then he slides the door open, and gently touches the wall just below the shower head. The tile glows, and a menu comes up. He taps once, “That sets it for water, what temperature?”

“Thirty-nine?”

He taps the screen again, and pulls his arm back as the water starts to flow. “Just nudge it up or down to change the temp. It’ll take a minute or so to get warmed up. Towels are under the sink. I’ll lay the suit out.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

 

 

* * *

Poe does not moan, loudly, when he steps under the water. It’s a quiet, dignified sort of salute to whatever bit of the Force decided that hot water should feel so damn good on sore muscles. It’s not like he was killing himself out there today, but… It’s abundantly clear, on a lot of levels, that he is not twenty-two any longer. Apparently, if he spends hours building and painting his left shoulder just _aches._ So, he is taking advantage of hot water sluicing down on him, easing said ache. (He supposes at some point he should ask Kylo what they charge officers for water so he can get Jon some sort of equally nice present back, but… With his luck, Kylo won’t know.)

He lingers under the water for another moment, and then attempts to figure out which of the way too many bottles in the shower is soap or shampoo.

Jon’s got… He’s picking up bottles… Body soap. Facial soap. Hair soap. Hair Masque. Conditioner. Moisturizer. Shaving soap. Post-shave balm. Dr. Feelgood’s Motion Potion. Poe’s hand goes limp when he reads that, and he almost drops the bottle. Then he gets a good grip on it and bites the meat of his thumb so he doesn’t laugh loud enough for Jon to hear. 

He’s grinning as he turns the bottle around, and… Yep, it’s specifically designed to be “Extra slick and super long lasting for good, clean, shower-time fun.”

 

 

 _Shit…_ Now there’s an image. Jon’s already way too damn pretty, and him jerking it here in this shower… Poe bites his lip. He puts the motion potion down, and reaches for the last bottle, wondering what else Jon may have in here. He can’t imagine there’s anything else the man might slather on his skin or hair… Though why said hair looks so soft and said skin so practically edible is no longer a mystery. Jon _takes care_ of himself.

Poe pauses for a moment. There is the husband. Maybe only some of this stuff is Jon’s… But… No. One soap, one shampoo, lots of other do-dads, but only one of each of the basic cleansing items. He glances to the razor… Only one of them. If the husband is still around, they share.

He looks at the motion potion, and a flood of images that raise Poe’s body temperature, and make his hand go drifting to his shaft, go cascading through his mind. Jon on his own in here… Jon and his man in here… _Fuck!_

He reaches for the last bottle, curious as to what else Jon or his man could possibly be putting on himself. There’s nothing written on it, and he can’t see anything that looks like a lid on it. Poe flips it over and sees the shape around the small hole in the bottom. _Oh._ Well, now he knows what Jon does with the motion potion. A smirk spreads even wider across his face, as he puts the wank sleeve down.

Then he looks at his own shaft, which he’s been absently stroking, and it’s happily standing at attention at the idea of any of this. He tells it to go the fuck back to sleep. There’ll be a time and place for spinning out the fantasy of Jon covered in soap suds, jerking it in his shower, maybe… maybe just because Poe wants to watch him do it.

Maybe, he’d put on a show for him.

Shit… Maybe, he could be in the shower with him, and the husband could watch both of them. The man in the pictures is good looking, and if he and Jon play around enough for Jon to have a _friend_ …

Maybe, he could be their _friend,_ too?

 _Force, get between the two of them… suck and fuck at once…_ Poe shudders and gives his shaft a good, firm squeeze. And then a long pull. And then… He’s got a job to do, and he’s been standing around in here too long babying his shoulder, and… And… maybe if he asked nicely Jon would rub his shoulder… Maybe the husband would come home while Jon’s rubbing his shoulder. Maybe he’d want to _help._

 _Stop it!_ Those images are doing exactly nothing to deflate his shaft.

Firmly flicking the top of it with his fingernail on the other hand, does.

Forcing his brain to stop thinking about sucking Jon down with the husband watching them while seeing how much fun that sleeve is helps even more.

And when he’s out of the shower, with his hair a hell of a lot smoother and softer than usual, he’s feeling pretty damn normal.

And, by the time he’s got his pants on, all of his various appendages are behaving themselves.    

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Poe gets out of Jon’s bedroom, Jon blinks at him. He was not expecting _that. That’s_ … “Nice!”

“Nice?” Poe asks, stepping closer to him, and turning around so he can see the whole suit.

“Yeah, that’s a legitimately good suit. You not only clean up well…” He notices the stubble. “Didn’t shave?”

“Morning. No point to doing it now, I’d just have to do it again, then. Gotta shave twice a day if I want to keep clean shaven, and my skin doesn’t much like that.”

Jon nods. “Okay.” His eyes go roaming up and down Poe’s suit, but, and this is a first for Poe, he appears to be looking _at the suit_ as opposed to _him in a suit._  “The color suits you, the cut is good, and the fit is a touch snug, but I can tell that's intentional. After working with Kylo and Rey… and… well…” Jon looks uncomfortable at letting that sentence go on that long.

Poe arches an eyebrow at Jon.

Jon opens and closes his mouth, and then commits to it. “No one ever accused the Resistance of being stylish. Rumor has it you guys went out of your way to find the ugliest clothing possible and never, ever spent even a single credit on anything beyond the barest functionality. Plebeian sentiments or something.”

Poe rolls his eyes. “Or something.” He sits next to Jon at the kitchen table, and pulls the plate that’s not in front of Jon to him. Dinner appears to be some sort of curry and flat breads. “You run an entire battle fleet on charity, good will, and the luck of the Force and see how spiffy your uniforms are.”

Jon figures that’s a legitimate point. “Yes, well, I didn’t have to. Between Snoke’s policies and the people who got rich off of them, me and mine never wanted for material goods.” Jon glances around at everything from the room to the food that was delivered while Poe was in his refresher, figuring that also makes the point. He reaches for the bottle of vodka. “We drinking?”

“One. We’re both supposed to be sharp tomorrow,” Poe replies.

“Do you have to stop at one to be sharp in the morning?”

“No. And you don’t either, but we’re going to because we’re adults with an important job to do, right?”

Jon pours them a glass each. Big for a shot, but not multiple servings. “Of course.”

Poe takes a sip. It’s good vodka, too. He touches the glass, and also looks around at everything around them. “When you aren’t stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, and then the taking a crowbar to the ones that are, it’s _tricky_ to keep yourself in nice things, like pretty uniforms,” Though he notes, that, apparently, while he was in the shower, Jon changed into his laying about at home clothing, a gray shirt and trousers. “good booze, and comfy apartments.”

That gets an amused look from Jon. It’s true that the First Order did take, a lot. But that’s not where most, or even a significant minority of its funding came from. Jon smirks. “You ever talk to Kylo about how much money we owe?”

Poe raises and eyebrow. “Owe?”

“Yes, _owe_. That’s a big chunk of why this contract, and any contracts that may spawn because of it matter so much. The Order is something in the range of 27 trillion credits in debt, and that’s _after_ Snoke blew up the Hosnian system, and the banks on it, and Kylo liquidated our largest creditor and stole their holdings. People lend you that kind of money when they think you can _win._ They may not have liked Snoke, or thought he was doing the right thing, but they knew they’d get rich off of him, so the money came pouring in.”

Poe sips his drink, feeling smug. “Pouring right into Starkiller, which I personally led the attack on, and blew the fuck up.”

They stare at each other for a long moment.

Jon nods slowly, _looking_ at Poe, eyes roaming up and down his body, seeing his physical person, here, now, and his image of the fighter pilot destroying the single largest military weapon ever created. “Among other things, yes. A huge chunk of it was here, in the Supremacy. More in the rest of the fleet. Some sprinkled throughout the 60,000 planets Snoke had men on.” He keeps looking at Poe, sitting, leaning back, legs wide, in gray and teal silk/wool blend suit, looking beyond cool and confident. Well, if this ship is going to explode before it gets out of dock, might as well do it now… He takes a long swallow of his drink. Maybe it won’t burn so much if the alcohol gives him a little armor. “I’ve… wondered… what the hell did you all think you were going to do against Snoke? If Kylo hadn’t turned… I mean… I’m a fucking design officer. The closest they let me to a fight is watching people train in the armor I made to make sure it works. But even I knew you didn’t have the numbers to even get close to winning this. You took out Starkiller, apparently personally, crippled the _Supremacy,_ we still had more than two million men and five hundred thousand fighters left. You had, what, one ship?”

Poe shrugs at that. “There are two sayings, among the old Rebels, well, some of them. The Church of the Force ones don’t really believe in the idea of Hell, but… The first one is this: It’s better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. The second is this: Your place in Hell is determined by the size of the honor guard you bring with you.” Poe offers Jon a knife sharp smile. “I figure mine’s at over 2.5 million. I mean, I know, compared to say, Hux or Tarkin, that’s a piddly sum, but for a flyboy from Yavin IV, that’s not a bad count, you know?”

Jon decides not to attempt to put a number on how many people he’s indirectly killed by working for the First Order. More than he’s comfortable with. “No, it’s not. So, was that it, just nibble away, kill as many as you can, because… You couldn’t stand the First Order?”

“Couldn’t stand them,” Poe shakes his head. “It’s not like this is jizz music or mushrooms or something. There’s a difference between personal preference and not idly sitting by and letting evil eat the galaxy.”

Jon’s eyes are cold. “Is there? I’d say have a chat with my Mom about that, but honestly, I don’t want the headache. I’ll sum it up like this, a group of terrorists spent twenty years sniping at a democratically elected government, claiming to be for a ‘Republic’ even though a functioning and legal Republic put that government into power. It’s possible, thought I don’t genuinely know, that that sniping goaded Tarkin into destroying Alderaan. Maybe that was just an excuse. But Alderaan was nineteen _years_ into a civil war started when a group of _rebels_ lost an election and decided they wouldn’t abide by it.

“Tell me, Poe, when the Rebellion started to attack Empire outposts and military targets, was that _evil?_ Did your Mom sign up before or after Alderaan, and if she signed up before, was it because of the Empire’s attacks on ‘civilian’ targets, all of which were either retribution for terror attacks or places hiding terrorists?”

Poe shakes his head. “I’m not going there, and you don’t get to go there, either, because we’re not talking about the Empire, but about the First Order, and for all you can claim the Empire were the good guys—“

“I’m not claiming they were the good guys, I’m claiming they were the _legal_ guys. Figuring out who the good guys are is a different job.”

“Maybe, but that’s beside the point, because there was absolutely _nothing_ legal about the First Order, and those are the guys I signed up to fight, so let’s keep it here, and now, and between you and I, and not between your Dad and my Mom.”

Jon nods. “Fair enough. Well then… If memory serves, there was nothing _legal_ about you and yours, either. You overthrew one legitimate government to set up a second republic, and as soon as it refused to go the way you wanted it, off you went on your own… So… Again, legal and good might not be the same thing, but how are we figuring out what evil is, beyond things you just don’t happen to like, if we toss aside any formal idea of law?”

Poe spends a moment staring at Jon. “You know, for a guy who dropped out of school and spent most of his life sewing and as a party boy, you’re way too well-versed in this stuff.”

Jon smirks, and then takes a bite of his supper. “You don’t have a good argument, do you?”

Poe’s eyes flash. “Don’t kill people who aren’t threatening you. There’s the baseline. Evil is fucking with people who aren’t fucking with you. That’s as fancy as I need to get. One day, maybe Rey’ll dress it up prettier, but I’m good there.”

Jon inclines his head a bit. “I can live with that.” Then he says, voice quieter, “And… if your side had lost the war, you’d be damn good at arguments for why they weren’t evil just for existing, too. You’d probably know all there is to say about legal and moral might not be the same thing, but without law, all you’ve got for moral is personal preference, so it’s got to start somewhere, with some shared concept of law, because otherwise you just get trillions of different ideas of evil.”

“Fine. I’m still going with my version of evil, and I’m okay with that, too. I don’t… need a billion other voices to agree with me on this. Snoke was fucking with people all over the galaxy who weren’t fucking with him, who never wanted to fuck with him, and the New Republic, who were supposed to protect the fucked-with, wouldn’t get off their asses and do it. Leia left—“

“Got tossed out.”

That gets a glare out of Poe.

“I’m just saying, would she have left if they hadn’t booted her out? Or like her father, would she have decided to try and work it from the inside?”

Poe’s eyes narrow. He thinks… “She would have left. She hadn’t said anything about it, not yet, but… It was there. I could feel it coming. You can’t… Her whole world, literal world, was blown up… And after that… You can’t just… sit on your ass and do nothing.”

Jon nods. He shrugs a bit, his body language making it clear he’s done a lot of ass sitting over the years, then looks at the chronometer, and the suit on Poe, which is really nice and absolutely won’t work for this, and sighs. Assuming he doesn’t want to be sewing _while_ they’re going to meet Rey, he’s got ten hours to get this done. Less eating, more working. “It’s a good suit. It looks really nice on you. And if I was going to take you somewhere elegant, it’d be great. That said, the K’Arans want something that screams power and wealth, and not in an understated sort of way, so…”

Poe raises an eyebrow at him, understanding that they’re tabling larger issues for right now. “So…”

“How do you feel about chocolate brown and coppers?”

“I’ve worn screaming orange flight suits. Brown and copper I can deal with.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

Dinner’s done. Poe offered to wash the dishes, and Jon just looked confused by that. Apparently, the droid who brought the food will take the dishes away when it comes back with breakfast. So, a quick rinse, put them back in the box they came in, and off they’ll go in the morning.

Poe’s not sure what to do with himself. He sent BB back to their ship, keep watch on things, but now he’s just sort of sitting around, as Jon’s unrolling bolts of fabric. He’s on the floor, kneeling next to the fabric, a deep, dark brown… Poe thinks it might be velvet, and he can’t imagine what Jon’s going to do with it, but… He’s the professional.

He looks around, supposedly, he could be ‘relaxing’ but that feels wrong while Jon’s working. He watches Jon work, which is certainly a pretty sight. There’s a man who belongs on his knees. Then he glances to the pictures of Jon and the handsome man.

Husband.

He’s got to be Jon’s husband. Jon’s wearing a marriage band. Poe does a little math, figures he’s been in Jon’s company, his _home_ for going on fifteen hours now, and there’s been no sight of the man, or mention.

“Is your… husband… stationed on a different ship?” That feels like a safe way to get near the question.

Jon’s head snaps up, and he goes dead still before saying, “No.”

Poe’s maybe not the smartest man to ever draw breath, but he can _feel_ the wave of _back off_ radiating off of Jon on that question. Poe just knows that the Husband is no longer in the literal picture. He’s dead or divorced or… gone somehow.

“Oh. Okay. Uh… The boys, tomorrow. I’m supposed to show them around and get to know them, right?”

“That’s the idea.” Jon looks a lot more comfortable talking about tomorrow.

“Give me the specs for the ship.”

Jon blinks at him.

“They’ll ask questions, and look, I can spin a story like no one’s business, and I know enough about ships that whatever I come up with will at least make sense, but if you want me to impress them with how big and strong and powerful this is, I need to know something about it beyond, ‘See that bay there, that’s where I stole a TIE, and slipped the whole First Order to escape with my friend Finn.’”

Jon blinks. “That’s how you met Finn?” He’s, of course, heard of the infamous Finn, and met his wife, but never him.

“Apparently he’d gotten Captain Phasma’s attention, and not in a good way.”

Jon winces. “Reconditioning?”

Poe nods. “I’ve never asked what’s involved in that, but I take it that’s not good.”

“I don’t know, either. Me and mine… There’s a reason we’ve got names and not numbers, but… I’ve never heard anyone say anything about it to indicate that anyone thinks it was fun.”

Poe nods at that. “Anyway, Finn comes to the conclusion he needs to be somewhere other than the _Supremacy._ Ren had me, and was trying to pull everything out of my brain, so I _needed_ to be somewhere else, too. So, it’s a good story, and I tell it well, but me hot-tailing it off the _Supremacy_ might not be exactly the image you’re looking for.”

Jon nods. “You’re not wrong about that. It’s… just…”

Poe raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t know if I can get what you’re looking for,” and it’s also clear that Jon’s not entirely comfortable handing that over to Poe even if he could get it.

Poe grins at him. “Last I checked, Grand Marshall, you should have access to anything your little heart desires. That’s what having a rank like that means. You ask for Stormtroopers to dance in front of you scattering lilac petals across your path, and they ask how many of them do you want, and do you want pink, purple, or white lilacs.”

Jon starts to giggle at that image. When he stops, he says, “I have a feeling requesting something like that is how you immediately lose a rank like Grand Marshall.”

“Or, at least, Kylo just hits you with that look. You know the one, where you’ve said or done something so far outside of anything approaching his experience his brain just freezes up and he’s got to reboot before he can deal with it.”

Jon sniggers at that, too. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that look.” He’s smiling as he thinks, because that look is amusing, and then it’s not, because that look generally goes along with something that if anyone who’d been even a quarter competent at raising kids had had Kylo, he wouldn’t have that look on his face. The smile starts to fall, then he says, “You knew his Mom, right?  I mean… really knew her?”

“I don’t know about _really._ I like to think I did, but she was my boss, so…”

“Okay. Seriously. Part of my job is training him in things he should have learned as a teenager.”

Poe’s looking at Jon curiously. He’s, of course, noticed that Ren’s got some holes in how he behaves compared to normal people, but he thought that was just… Ren. The idea that he never learned in the first place didn’t occur to him. “Like what, table manners?”

“No, those he got. Like…” Jon thinks. “Like how to use cologne, or it’s okay to be attracted to women who aren’t Rey, or if you get out of the refresher, and there’s someone else in the room when you get out, the towel goes around your waist, not your hair.”

Poe covers his mouth to stifle the laugh. “Oh, Jon…”

“Where the hell were his parents? Okay, Jedi school is apparently… lacking… in basic how to be a human in society skills, fine, but… I’m honestly shocked he knows how to shave. And I still don’t know if he doesn’t use deodorant because he and Rey think he smells fine as is, or if he doesn’t know it’s a thing.”

Poe makes his eyebrows drop. Apparently Jon’s spent quite a bit more intimate time with Kylo than he has. Though, as he thinks about different afternoons and days spent working with Rey, especially when it was still summer. He shakes his head. “They just don’t know it’s a thing.”

“Great. Well… I mean… I can say a lot to him, but I’m not about to start up a conversation with, ‘Hey, do you smell that way after a workout intentionally?’”

Poe smirks at that. “I can see that. Meanwhile, as the asshole pseudo-older brother, I can cover that one.” He’s actually rather enjoying the mental image of taking care of that. He might even tell Finn about it. That should make his decade.

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to. Luke or… whoever, should have sat his ass down two decades ago and explained this to him.”

Poe shrugs. “Jedi… I don’t know. They were supposed to be apart, right? Not really people in society, right? At least, that’s as best as I know about it. And Kylo’s said things about how they weren’t supposed to want or get attached or be anything other than Jedi, so maybe it was a way to help keep temptation at bay… People generally don’t want to be near me after a hot day with no deodorant… But… Okay, yeah, you’d think the towel thing…”

“You’d think! Maybe he was just pranking me, but he seemed on the level with it.” Jon’s watching Poe, waiting.

“Right… Uh… Leia. I knew she had a son. She had a few pictures of him in her office. One of her and Han and Ben, but… I thought Ben was a lot younger than he was, because he was like, six or seven in the picture. A decade went by, and he was still six or seven in the picture, and it occurred to me that if I thought he was younger than he was, everyone else likely did, too, so they’d be looking for a kid, not a teen or young man.

“And, you have to realize, Leia was a target. I worked security for her, and people were _constantly_ trying to take her out or down. I am good at this sort of thing because I _needed_ to be. She wasn’t, by a long shot, the only member of the senate who kept her family far away and hidden. She didn’t like it, but it was safer that way.”

“She didn’t go home at night to her family?”

“Not when I was there, but… I got there at seventeen… so that puts Kylo at twelve, and… He was already with Luke then. I don’t know what it was like before he went to Luke. Not from Leia’s point of view.

“So, I knew Ben existed. I met Han a few times, saw him more. I saw Luke, once. The day he showed up is the day the pictures went away. And Han did, too. I never saw him again. And Leia never mentioned Ben again.

“Kylo captured me, and I’m smartass-ing my way through interrogation, because that’s what I do, and I had no idea he was her son. He just about went nuclear at the idea that I was the best pilot in the Resistance. Apparently, that’s who he’d wanted to be before it all went pear-shaped.

“Before that mission… There was a chance the First Order would be there. We didn't exactly want them to show up, because that would complicate things, but we also knew Ren was looking for the same map I was, so he  _might_ show up, and I had orders to take out anyone I could, anyone I saw, and if that meant Kylo, that meant Kylo, too. I got a good shot at him. Fucker can stop laser bolts with the Force, which is a snazzy trick, but if he couldn’t have, I’d have shot him dead, and  gotten a medal for it.”

Jon blinks. “And she would have pinned it to your chest.”

“Yeah.”

Jon sighs at that. “She sounds hard.”

Poe shrugs a bit. “Hard like a diamond. Sharp and bright and sparkly. Strong, too. Funny… But… You’d have to be, right? A soft person would have been crushed by the weight of it.”

Jon shrugs a bit, too. “I suppose.” He looks at the fabric on the floor in front of him, and begins to lay the pattern out on it. “Do you think she wanted him?”

“I never got the sense she didn’t, but I mean… he was there before I met her, so… They didn’t have any other kids. And… well… Apparently, his birthday is _exactly_ ten months after the Battle of Endor, so… Not like he couldn’t have been an oops.”

“Let me guess, Battle of Endor was a big celebration day for Rebels.”

“Second only to Concordance Day.”

Jon rolls his eyes.

“Stop that, didn’t you guys have Empire Day?”

“We might have. I think my mom’s mentioned it. But by the time I was on the scene, openly celebrating it was a one way ticket to prison, so it’s not like it was part of my childhood.”

Poe feels that line. There’s a glib reply on his lips, but he stops before he say it. “That was real for you? Growing up, afraid that…”

“My mom or oldest sister or brothers-in-law were going to get tossed in jail? Yeah, it was. Earliest dream I can remember was a nightmare of New Republic Gendarmes coming to our house to take Mom away.”

“Your mom is a dressmaker.”

Jon just sighs at that, a long, drawn out sound. “Apparently more than that, but, no I didn’t know that. Not then. Not until… what, last week? I could feel she was nervous all the time. I was too young to understand, but her clients would whisper about who got taken, or who was going away… ‘Extended vacation in beautiful Celjonia courtesy of the New Republic,’ I didn’t know that was sarcasm until I was twelve or so and got to hear about what the Empire did to Celjonia, and then understood why the New Republic used it as a prison planet for Imperials. She’d always stiffen up a bit when she’d see a Gendarme. If one was walking toward us on the street, she’s pull me a little closer, hold my hand a little tighter, and fix her smile bright and steady, and her gaze straight ahead. Her _Happy New Republican_ look.” There’s a _lot_ in how Jon says that.

Poe’s not entirely sure what to do with it. “Home for me is… was… Yavin IV.”

Jon nods. Even he paid enough attention in school to know Yavin IV. “Let me guess, you never saw an actual Imperial…”

“Until I was seventeen and assigned to Leia’s protection detail.” He shrugs some. “They weren’t… you know, real people. Faceless monsters on the holovids. Literally faceless, we always saw the pictures of them wearing the armor. Even on Coruscant… There would be whispers about un- or barely-reformed Imperials, but… Those were whispers. I didn’t see a real one until I was standing around, being security at a hearing where a few of the prisoners were testifying. There were rumors, even that many years after the war, that someone would try to kill them to keep them from talking.”

Jon’s eyes are hot, but his voice is mild as he says, “Yes, I know. I had to watch those vids, too. And a lot of those trials. Part of why I dropped out of school. As a teenager, I had a difficult time not getting pissed at those, and… Well, we couldn’t afford to have the New Republic looking too closely at us. We were Happy New Republicans,” he flashes Poe his version of his mother’s smile, “all getting along in peace and harmony with the new order of things.”

“What did your Dad do? Design the bloody Death Star? Run the work camps? Pull the trigger on Alderaan? I mean… Okay, yeah, I’m sure it sucked, but… They didn’t just throw Imperials in jail right and left with no good reason. I know we had rules of war, and any Imperial who didn’t violate them didn’t go to jail. They wouldn’t have put your family away just for being… Imperials.”

“That’s not how I understood it. That’s not how a lot of kids on Coruscant understood it.” Poe knows that. Growing up, he’d play Rebels and Imperials, and everyone wanted to be a Rebel because the whole point of the game was pretty much to pile onto the Imperials and beat the shit out of them. “That’s not how it was taught to us. And… maybe it’s because we were on the outs and they were on the rise, but… If you were part of an Imperial family, you took a _lot_ of shit.”

“So, you weren’t sitting in a class full of other Imperial kids?”

“A few. Most of my classmates were the kids of senators or the people who made their money catering to them. Some were old Coruscanti families like mine. All of our teachers, best I knew, all teachers on the planet, had to be approved by the New Republic, make sure we were getting the _right_ sorts of lessons. You know, so _history couldn’t repeat itself_.”

Poe chews his lip. “We didn’t go there earlier. You side stepped it, but… Do you think the Empire were the good guys?”

Jon shrugs. “Yes? No? I… don’t know. Obviously not for the average person wandering about on Alderaan on the wrong day. But I also know, speaking of those rules of war, that if you run a bloody rebellion on a planet, you make it a fucking target, and you don’t get to bitch when it gets blown to pieces. It’d be one thing if they’d picked Alderaan at random, but they didn’t. Bail Organa was not some random guy who just happened to live on that planet. Leia Organa was _not_ an innocent bystander picked at random. And I also know there were a lot of planets on the verge of starvation that The Empire got up and working and eating again. I know a lot of the local wars were crushed, and peace popped up all over the galaxy in places that hadn’t had it for decades. I know they took out unpopular local regimes, and popular ones, too. And I know they cracked down _hard_ on smugglers, organized crime, the drug and prostitution trade. A lot of people liked that. And I know there were planets that were lush and flush that they crippled to keep power, and… I know the work camps were real. I know the prison camps weren’t just filled with criminals. I know collectivized farming was used as a weapon on some planets to starve people into submission, and I know the food it raised was often sent to other planets to end famines. So, I don’t know. For some people, in some places, at some times, yes. For others, in other places, at other times, no.

“I know they were the legal guys. They were voted in in a clean election, and supposedly that’s the kind of thing that matters, right? Consent of the governed? I think that’s what they called it in school. That was the claim of why the New Republic were the good guys. They had the consent of the governed.”

“Yeah. That’s how we learned it. And we also learned it as people have the right to withdraw that consent and demand a new government. That was why the Empire didn’t have legal standing. When the Senate finally got enough votes together to demand the removal of Palpatine, he dissolved the senate.”

“Hence the Rebellion and Resistance and whatnot. Though if memory serves, the Rebellion had been going on for _nineteen years_ when they finally won that vote.”

“Yeah.”

Jon finishes pinning the pattern to the fabric. “So… If you can bugger off whenever the powers that be go against you, what’s the point of a democracy?” Jon makes a mental note to fly that by Kylo at some point, too. After all, right now, anyone who doesn’t want to stay can leave, and theoretically, at some point they’ll be voting on this stuff, so…

“No idea. I’m much better at the blow shit up side of this.” He half smiles a bit, but it’s not a happy look. “From everything I can see, you’re getting that Grand Marshall because you’re good at this stuff. I got Admiral because besides Leia and Connix, I had the most seniority, and it sounds good when you’re going to try and talk a few battle cruisers out of someone. I’m… not a tactician. I’m not particularly good with supply lines or… any of the billion things you need to run an army. I was just… there, and looked good in a suit, and could talk a good line.”

Jon looks at the patterns in front of him. “Kylo likes talking to me, supposedly because I _know_ stuff about politics and culture and how things are supposed to look.” Jon looks up at Poe and rolls his eyes. “And I hate the fact that the only reason it looks like I know this stuff is because someone abysmally failed at training him to be a human being in this galaxy. If he’d been even minimally prepared for--”

Poe stands up, crosses the room, and kneels next to Jon, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I think he likes talking to you, because you’re good to talk to. And because you do hate the fact that he didn’t get what he needed as a kid. That’s probably more empathy than he ever got from anyone who wasn’t Rey before a few months ago.”

 

 

“That’s appalling.” Their eyes meet, and hold, for a long second.

“I know.” Poe lets go of Jon’s shoulder, and looks down at the pattern on the fabric. “Are those going to be velvet trousers?”

“Yes.”

“Why….” Poe’s just looking. It’s clear he’s shifting them away from the heavier topics again.

Jon’s fine with that. They probably don’t need to leap headfirst all the way into the deep end at once. “It’s a culture that values wealth, power, and strength. I’m sticking you in an outfit that oozes the first two, and it’s your job to look like you’ve got piles of the last and you’re just choosing not to do anything with it.”

“You’re saying I don’t normally look like I’ve got piles of strength?” Poe asks with a raised eyebrow, and just possibly, flexing a bit.

“I’m saying they’re expecting Kylo, who is a fucking mountain of a man, and you aren’t.”

Poe sighs. Kylo’s got half a head, and likely fifteen kilos of muscle on him. “That’s fair.” Then he looks Jon in the eyes. “So, I’m not a mountain, but I’ve got a very good head on my shoulders for things that fly. Get me the specs. Let me study. And I’ll blow them away with how well I know this ship tomorrow.”

And for a heartbeat, it feels… bizarre, like looking over the edge of a cliff. But a cliff behind glass. Jon feels like he knows he can’t fall, but the sense of it is still real.

Poe’s not going to fuck him over with this. He _knows_ that.

And it still feels like a massive leap of faith to both order up, and then give _Admiral Dameron of the Resistance_ , the full technical specs of the _Supremacy._

But he does it anyway, because if this is going to work, he’s got to trust the people around him.

 

 

* * *

It’s later.

A _lot_ later.

Poe’s taken off his jacket, undone his tie and tucked it in a pocket, rolled up his sleeves, nursed his way, slowly through two glasses of tea (Jon was horrified to see him pour his tea over ice in a tall glass. “It’s good, try it!” “Are you out of your mind? Ice, in tea? Are you going to tell me you drink vodka warm next?” “No, but ricewine’s good hot.” “Heathen!”) and read over more pages of technical specifications than he can count. He’s fairly sure, at this point, the only people who know more about the make-up of the _Supremacy_ are droids.

Some of the bits are fascinating. Some of it make him want to get off this floating death trap, _fast._ It’s still holding together, so… Yeah, that’s a good thing, but… Whoever made it went wild on the weapons and put hull integrity so far down the list of priorities he’s stunned it doesn’t lose chunks every time it hits hyperspeed.

Hell, for all he knows, it does.

He stretches, working the kinks out of his neck, and reminds himself that he’s looking at the original specs, and in the intervening years, hopefully, things have been improved. (Apparently, even for the Grand Marshall, some things are just not going to be shaken loose, among them, the up to date specs of the _Supremacy._ Pretty much, they told Jon that if he showed up, in person, with Kylo, he could look at a copy of one specific section of the ship, in Engineering, with the Head Engineer next to him, making sure he didn’t compromise anything or remove anything. Something about Grand Admiral Schiff tightening up security on the ship build, or something. Jon didn’t feel like fussing, so he’s got the original specs, which are more than close enough for Poe to BS a hell of a story tomorrow.)

He looks over at Jon, who is still on the floor, working on something. There’s a droid next to him basting pieces of fabric together. The droid makes a little beeping sound, and then stops.

Jon glances at it, and then at Poe, who’s watching him. For a second, Poe almost feels flustered at getting caught looking, but he knows what to do with that. He flashes his best grin, and then says, “Looks like your sewing machine wants your attention.”

“He does.” Jon’s eyes linger on his. “Up you get, pants off, let’s see how these things fit.”

That widens Poe’s smile.

He puts the pad down, steps out from the kitchen table, and toes off his shoes. He carefully, with full eye contact, undoes each of the buttons on his vest. Then he slowly, deliberately undoes his belt. Jon stares at him as he does it, eyes on his fingers, and then he seems to mentally pinch himself, and the tenor of his gaze shifts.

 

 

He also tosses the trousers at Poe. “Try them on. We’ve got…” He checks the chrono. “Eight hours for me to get this done, assuming I’m not going to be marching you through the decks in your skivvies, sewing as we head to Rey, so…”

Poe pulls off his trousers which much less fanfare, and then slips on the new ones. “They feel nice.” He’s never contemplated velvet trousers before, but the fabric feels good against his skin.

Jon’s looking at him now, too. This doesn’t feel sexy, or romantic, or… anything. This is professional. “You’ve got bigger thighs than I thought. Go sit down, make sure they’re still comfortable.”

Poe does. He sits, gets up, walks around, sits again. “They’re good. Little snug, but I like that.”

Jon’s nodding. “They are.” Then his eyes flicker a bit, and he’s really looking at Poe under the trousers, and how they just sort of cling to his hips and thighs. “Yeah, they are.”

Poe, his back to Jon, pulling them off, and maybe, just maybe, giving him a bit of a show, smiles at that.

 

 

* * *

Jon’s putting together the strap that will keep Poe’s cloak in place. He’s kneeling on the floor, carefully gluing each piece into place. If he was doing it right, he’d be wiring it, but… There just isn’t time for that. It’s based on the idea of scale armor, small squares of highly reflective copper, patina-ed dull brown copper, more blinding shined red-gold, and cerise-stained brall wood, all overlapping each other on a flexible belt that will go from his left shoulder, around his chest, under his right arm, and across his back to his left shoulder again, securing his cloak.

Poe glances down at it as he places a glass of water next to Jon. “Shiny mirror-ed strap? I’ll look like you peeled a disco ball and put it on me.”

Jon blinks, and then _looks_ at Poe. Then he blinks again. “You know what a disco ball is?”

After all, there are clubs, and places that have disco balls, and Jon has been to several of them. Some of his very best memories with Lane involve one of those clubs. But… Jon’s never seen one at a place that didn’t cater to a sort of… particular… narrow… clientele. The sort of place a man like Poe would _never…_ Well, maybe not _never…_ There have been some bits tonight that are indication Poe might not be quite as narrow as Jon was originally thinking, or if he is, he’s narrow for men, but… Still… Poe wouldn’t dare to set a foot in a club like that.

Except, well, maybe he would.

“Of course I do. I’ve been to a party before. I’m not Kylo, for the Force’s sake. We had parties in the New Republic. Hell, even in the Resistance we could, on occasion, scrape up enough credits to go out drinking and dancing. Speaking of Kylo, were you going to dip him in sparkles for this, and if so, how fast were you intending to run away once he saw what you were going to do with him?”

Jon mentally winces and backtracks, in the parts of the galaxy he’s been, he knows the sorts of clubs that might have a disco ball, but from the way Poe just said it, it sounds a hell of a lot more common where he’s from. Still, a little spark leaps up at the fact that he knows what one is… _Don’t get your hopes up._ Yeah, Poe’s laying on the double entendres tonight, but some men think that’s just… fun.

And… If Poe is what Jon fantasizes about, narrow for women, officially, publicly, with just a little niggling thought in the back of his mind about, maybe, occasionally, kissing a boy, double entendres might be all he can get out of the man.

Fortunately, Poe takes Jon’s momentary quiet as him debating what Kylo would have done to him had he attempted to get him into an ornate velvet and glitter outfit.

“Uh, no. Just his formal blacks. There’s enough power and strength coming of his physical body, and the fabric’s good enough, I wasn’t worried about conspicuously signaling wealth on top of it. I mean, we’re standing in _his_ ship, and it’s the largest one in the galaxy.”

“The man who’s rich enough _not_ to show it off.” Poe nods to the strap. “For the record, I don’t mind some glitz, but if we ever do this again, tone it down some, please.”

“For the record, once this is over, we can sit down and talk about the look of the Maji when you’re off being _The Maji,_ but right now, since we’re winging this with,” he checks his chronometer, “six and a half hours to go, you’re just going to have to go with what I put you in.”

“You’re pretty bossy for a man on his knees.”

Jon blinks again at that, too, wondering how much of a double entendre that was meant to be. “You’ve got no idea.”

Poe grins down at him, keeps the eye contact up, and then says, “What if I wanted one?”

Okay, that _absolutely_ is flirting, so… “Get us through this, and maybe I’ll give you one.”

“Yes, sir.”

He really, really needs not to be staring at Poe’s crotch, and the lovely bulge there, which is more or less right at eye... mouth level right now, thinking about how many other ways he can get Poe to call him sir, and get back to making sure that strap look right. He tears his eyes away from Poe and looks at the strap some more, and then decides that, if it reminds Poe of a disco ball, and not scale armor… He starts picking the bits of metal off. Just leather. Good, supple, leather, snug around Poe’s chest, draping over…

Maybe, if things go really well tomorrow, it might be between Poe’s teeth, biting down on the leather, muffling his moans, as he--

Okay, he’s _really_ got to stop thinking about that.

 

 

* * *

It’s a discreet tube. Smaller than Jon’s thumb. They’re standard issue among the Order, and fit into a small pocket sewn into the left thigh of the standard uniform trousers.

With six hours to go until he needs to be _done,_ when he’s starting to seriously flag, Jon pulls it out, removes the lid, and pops one of the tabs between his molars, biting down, hard, feeling the bitter hiss of the stim cap breaking, and then closes his eyes for a moment as the rush of energy floods through him, making him feel alive again.

Poe looks across at him, from where he’s reading up on more of the _Supremacy_ specs, making sure he’s ready to show off the _Supremacy_ and get to know the boys as he does so.

“You okay?”

“I am now.” He offers the tube to Poe. “You need one, or if you get a nap can you keep going without collapsing?”

Poe understands what Jon’s got in the tube. “Uh… Nap.” He checks the chronometer. He’s cutting it short, but, six hours should do him well enough. A bit of tea on top of that, and he’ll be good to go. “I… uh… don’t use those.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “They’re perfectly safe. I’ve been up to… shit… uh ten of them a week at one point. You get jittery, and they say you shouldn’t go more than three cycles on them without natural sleep, but if you need to keep going…”

“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been on them, too. But… I make bad decisions on them. You know… You feel like you can take on everything and anything and you’re right about everything and…” He can see the way Jon’s looking at him. “No?”

Jon shakes his head. “Uh, not for me. Jittery and wired sometimes. Wide awake. Heart beats a little too fast. Ultra-confident isn’t on the list.”

“Oh.”

They’re both quiet. Jon keeps eyeing Poe, and Poe puts his datapad down. “You guys… Well, Kylo, captured me. I was at Tuunal, had been there for… three hours… ten flying to get there. Kylo knocked me out, which isn’t exactly restful, and I wake up in interrogation, which also wasn’t restful. Finn got me out… I don’t know how many hours later. Too many. I get us off the _Supremacy._ That was… exciting… We get shot down on Jakku. More not so restful hours unconscious. Then slogging through the desert. Not restful and dehydrated likely with a concussion. Stole a ship. Got back to the Resistance. Took an anti-stim, got four hours of sleep before the next attack. From there we roll right into Starkiller. That was enough adrenaline to kill a man. Get done with Starkiller, get another anti-stim, two hours of rest before your entire Navy shows up, and by that point I’m downing stims like they’re candy. We had… three days I think, time gets blurry after too many stims, of a fighting retreat, you bring out your big boys, and I come up with a plan to get the last of our people out, before we get crushed by Peavy and his dreadnaught.

“And, you know what, with that many stims in my body I was sure I had the perfect, Force-blessed plan. And you know what, it _fucking worked_. One in a million shot, and it _worked.  I stood down the Fulminatrix,_ one lone X-wing against you're whole fucking navy, fast talked Hux into knots, and we got our people out. So, I’ve got a direct line on the _Fulminatrix_ , and three bombers, and a small but functional navy behind me, and I take them in. Dreadnaughts… If you can take one of those babies out…

“Leia told me to call off the attack. I had direct orders to retreat, and I didn’t do it. The Force was smiling on me and I couldn’t make a wrong decision. I took my whole fleet in, and we killed the _Fulminatrix_. But… We lost three quarters of our fleet, too. And unlike you bastards, we didn’t have replacements.

“She demoted me when I got back, slapped me, too. Didn’t send me to the brig. She probably should have. Holdo _definitely_ should have. I’m guessing we were at more than a week since I’d had actual rest at that point. More stims.

“You bastards show up, blow the shit out of our ships. Leia’s out of it. Holdo is second-in-command at that point. Granted, even demoted, so many of us are dead, I’m third-in-command at that point. She won’t tell me her plan, doesn’t like me, and I’m not exactly her biggest fan either, and… So, more stims, and I’m running a mutiny.

“Cause, you know, I’m making _good decisions_ and _really_ need to be in command at that point.

“Leia wakes up and shoots my ass, and eventually I get some sleep and…” Poe looks to the ceiling. “Fuck.”

“Holdo wouldn’t tell you her plan?” Jon’s voice is intense, and Poe’s got the sense there’s something important there, but he doesn’t know what.

“Nah. Part of it was putting me in my place. Part of it was just bad command skills. I know, I know, when does a Vice Admiral have to explain herself to a Captain? Never. But you know what, when you’re down to fewer than five hundred people, and that Captain has worked with most of them, and ten minutes previous he was a fucking Commander, AND he’s the guy who blew up fucking Starkiller, AND he’s the one who came up with the plan that got the civilians out, AND you’re playing the destruction of the _Fulminatrix_ as a win because you don’t want to completely fuck morale, AND fewer than two hundred of them know you, you bloody well take the fucking time to explain it to the Captain or you throw his ass in the brig, or else he raises a mutiny against you, because from what he can see you’ve frozen and are going to get all of us killed with indecision.”

“What was the plan?” Jon’s voice is quiet.

“Crait. There was a refuge on Crait. Let our ships go. You guys would chase us, but only focus on the big ones. The little ones were shielded. They could slip away to Crait, and you’d think you’d killed us when you blew up the last of the ships.”

“Cutting the _Supremacy_ in half?” Jon’s voice doesn’t tremble, but it’s so hot, even Poe can feel it.

“If that was part of the plan, she never told us about it. But, she also didn’t get off the _Raddus_ when we evacuated, so… The shields didn’t hold. You guys were picking us off, one by one, and could see where we were going… I don’t know if she rammed the _Supremacy_ to give the rest of us an out, or if that was always the plan, or… I don’t know. She didn’t exactly like me, and I was unconscious anyway.” Poe tries a smile, and it comes off flat. “Anyway, no stims for me. Not anymore.”

Jon nods, and tucks the tube back into his trousers. His voice isn’t shaking, but he can feel his pulse in his ears and eyes. “If you had known her plan, would you have mutinied?”

“No.” That prickles, electric, through Jon. But Poe’s not done. “I would have talked to her. The thing I knew, that she didn’t, was that there was a way to fuck with the tracker you guys had on us. We had to find a refuge within range of the little ships because we couldn’t jump to hyperspace, because you guys were tracking us through hyperspace. If we’d been working on killing that tracker, all of us, together, we likely could have slipped it, jumped to hyperspace, and gotten clean away.” Jon relaxes, a bit, hearing that. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m obviously stupid enough to run an attack with bad chances of winning, but I’m not into literal suicide missions.” Poe’s quiet for a moment, and then almost laughs. “I never thought to wonder how many stims she was on at that point. Not like any of us had had a restful week.”

Jon’s very quiet, staring at the picture on the wall, behind Poe. Then he says, “You asked about where my husband is.”

Poe nods. “Yeah.” He feels the shiver down his back.

“Kylo had told me you ran the mutiny against Holdo. That was the only reason I was willing to work with you.”

That shiver morphs into a tight ball of dread in his stomach. “Okay…”

Jon looks around at his apartment. “This is home. His home before it was mine. We’re… organized so you’re above or below your station, but Lane didn’t start in Tactical Design. He, originally, was in Shipping Logistics, but he was good enough at seeing how making each bit work better made everything else work better, and Tactical Design was a morass at that point, so they shifted him over. That’s how he got his Major’s stripes. He didn’t move. He liked this apartment, and wanted to stay in it, and didn’t mind the fact that getting from here to Tactical Design took close to an hour and a half. He told me he liked the enforced thinking time. Not much to do besides think when you’re on the tram going from here to there. He said a lot of the time, he needed that quiet space.

“1,298,092 people died when she ran her ship through the _Supremacy._ As best they could tell, she hit five levels below where Tactical Design used to be.” Poe winces. He knows where this story is going. “Lane was on duty. If our apartment hadn’t been here, and if I hadn’t worked a double the day before…” Jon shakes his head. “Stupid fucking problem. The filtration systems on the Stormtrooper’s backs jutted out just a bit too far, messing with range of motion in their arms, and I’d spent sixteen hours playing with it, trying to pare it down by half a centimeter… He told me to leave it be and go to bed. So… I did. And… uh… I half woke up when he went to work, gave him a kiss, and woke up for real when my face smacked into the ceiling because we didn’t have gravity any longer.”

Poe closes his eyes and nods. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” Jon looks to the door to his bedroom. “Go, crash. Get your nap. I need you bright and shiny for the K’Aran delegation.”

Poe nods. He takes a step over, and gently squeezes Jon’s shoulder before saying, “Yeah. Bright and shiny. No problems.”

 

 

* * *

As soon as the door to Jon’s room closes, Poe wants to kick himself in the ass with both feet.

_Shit._

_SHIT._

_SHIIIIITTTTT!!!!_

Then he decides that as soon as he’s up and moving again, he’s going to kick Kylo in the ass, too, because the absolute least the man could have done was mention that Jon’s husband was fucking _dead_ and the bastard died in the attack on the _Supremacy._

Except, of course, that would require Kylo knowing things like what the least possible thing he could have done to smooth this over would have been.

Which brings him back to Jon, who’s sitting out there, sewing away, still wearing his fucking marriage band two bloody years later, in his husband’s apartment with pictures of them still up, and

_SHHHIIIIITTTTTTTT!!!!!!_

It’s been _years_ since he’s seen someone he’s been more than vaguely interested in. Since he’s wanted more than a dance and a shag. Decades since that someone also liked men, and, of course… He’s still in bloody mourning.

Poe wants to collapse on the bed and moan into the pillows, and if he were in his own bunk he’d fucking do it, but… SHIIIITTTT!!! This is the bed Jon and his husband used to share and the idea of flopping onto it to curse the heavens that this shit _never_ fucking works out for him is just… Too fucking much.

He gets undressed. He, unusually for him, when he gets to sleep in a bed, leaves his skivvies on. He carefully, respectfully, turns down the sheets and blankets, and slips into bed. Jon’s bed. The bed he should be sharing with his husband if Holdo hadn’t plowed through the _Supremacy._ If the _Supremacy_ hadn’t tracked them through hyperspace. If they hadn’t been at war. If Snoke had kept his ass in the unknown regions. If…

A billion ifs didn’t happen.

A million concrete things did.

Meaning right here, right now, Jon’s in his living room, finishing up a suit for Poe. And Poe’s lying here, thinking about a lot of things he’d prefer not to think of, from the ring he wears on a chain around his neck. The ring he shouldn’t have, because it should have been on Micah’s finger when…

But it wasn’t.

And Jon’s got a ring without a mate, too.

And…

 

 

Two years. Everyone moves at their own speed. Poe knows that. Two years after, he was dating, well, fucking again. And he was… sober whenever he was on duty… Sometimes he had to take a stim to do that, too, but… Jon’s drinking habits are suddenly making a lot more sense. Whatever else he is, he’s not just a party boy with nebulously defined borders between on duty and off duty. Two years… Poe wasn’t flying again yet, other than occasional transport duty. He couldn’t bear to be even near a fighter, and Leia was kind enough to indulge him on that. Jon’s… still doing the job. And a hell of a lot more. But… work can be a distraction. Leia gave him a spot in her physical security team, and he buried himself in it, learned it inside and out, and did it every hour of the day he could, and Poe’s willing to bet that’s exactly what Jon’s done with Tactical Design and whatever the hell he’s calling what he does now.

Jon’s got a friend, but… fucking hell, she might just be a _friend._ Or he’s got someone he’s fooling around with, but there’s no way it’s more than that, not with him still living in a shrine to his husband and their marriage.

“ _Fuck.”_ There’s barely any voice to it. He’d been flirting up one side and down the other with him, and he’d gotten the hint that at least some of those looks were getting some interest in return, poor boy just about popped a stand with that ‘on his knees’ comment, but…

He rolls over, face in the pillow, inhaling… He can smell Jon’s shampoo and cologne in the fabric. He wants to smell it on his skin. Wants to lick it off him. Wants… a lot.

And he just knows, in his heart and soul and shaft, that if they get to the post-mediation dinner with a signed contract in hand, he can pin Jon with a good long stare, lick his lips, and get him into bed. He knows it.

Poe sighs. A lot of men got him into bed not long after Micah died, too.

And it’s all they got.

He can see Jon, the wave of his hair, those fucking blue eyes, and the suggestion of his body under his clothing, and… Force, they’d be _so good_ together _._

He makes himself close his eyes and breathe deeply. Makes himself relax into the pillows and mattress.  He’s always been good at getting himself to sleep when he needs it, and tonight he does.

He makes himself drift, and his mind go soft, and it does, flitting about as it seeks sleep.

He’s thinking about talking with Jon. And enjoying it. A lot more than any other conversation he’s had in a long time.

The scent of him is in the pillow. His words are in Poe’s mind.

And he knows he’s falling hard, and fast, and likely stupid.

And more than that, he knows, that if he’s going to get what he wants out of this, he’s going to have to wait. Jon’s not ready for him, yet.

But he knows, starting to drift off, that he can wait, and likely should, because this is going to be worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> Okay, I can feel it now. “Wait, who the hell is Micah? You’re cheating Keryl, whipping up a new character on us out of nowhere with no backstory!”
> 
> Guilty. (Ish. If you were reading closely and have an amazing memory, you’ll have noticed that Poe’s ship is named Micah… But, really that’s not exactly playing by the rules here.)
> 
> So, when I began to write Jon, a billion years ago, I didn’t know I was creating a second Dark/Light Order/Maji relationship. Eventually, as my version of Poe took more shape, I knew I’d be going there, but that was well after I had Jon and just about all of his backstory in hand. (For any of my Shards readers, Jon may look a tad familiar. You met him the first time as Dr. Sam Allen, Jimmy’s Assistant ME. He’s morphed a bit, but the core Sam became the core Jon. I’m a firm believer in making sure my OCs live forever, in one form or another.)
> 
> And as I was doing that, I noticed I’d set him and Poe up to mirror each other in a lot of ways, subconsciously. (Dead parents, Jon wears his wedding ring still, Poe wears his mother’s wedding ring, dark/light, both lost a parent to the Battle of Endor, blah, blah, blah.) None of those were intentional until I was re-reading and noticed I’d been doing it. (Sometimes the muse knows where I'm going before the brain does, but sooner or later the brain catches up.)
> 
> Micah’s intentional. I don’t write in order. So the first time Micah shows up is further along in the story, but written months ago. He’s been part of my idea of Poe for at least six months, though I didn’t intend to bring him up for a while, yet. But then I got here, and we got to the reveal of Lane, and… Well, that’s the sort of thing that’s got to get Poe thinking of Micah.
> 
> Even before I had an idea of Micah, I knew that Poe needed to have had at least one serious relationship. A guy gets to 38-years-old, and if he’s never had a real relationship of some sort, that’s not just a red flag, that’s a parade route full of red flags. And while Poe's got issues, those aren't the sorts of issues I wanted for him.
> 
> Anyway, just know that we’ll get more of the Micah story eventually. You will know who this dude is and why he matters, and also a lot more of why Poe is who he is. 
> 
> Point the second. Yeah, I’m getting heavy into the politics here, because… mostly because neither Jon nor Poe has enough Force sensitivity to just float along on the idea of this is right because it feels that way. Rey and Kylo are sort of feeling their way through it. Jon and Poe have to become intentional moral thinkers because it’s not enough to just sort of feel it. (Yeah, we’re into the philosophy part of porn with philosophy. I promise cum shots in the not wildly distant future. But first, more politics! Yeah, I know. ;) )
> 
> The reason I’m bringing this up is that I think it’s important to make it clear that I, personally, do not approve of or think the Empire are the good guys. 
> 
> But they absolutely were the legal guys. 
> 
> And legal is not good. Democratically elected is not good. The “will of the people” does not make something good. Anyone with a role playing background is familiar with both lawful good and lawful evil. And in the StarWars universe we've got a LOT of lawful evil.
> 
> But even evil, even regimes intentionally designed to fuck over as many people as humanly possible, will, for some people, at some times, in some ways, be the “good guys.” (Not to put too fine a point on it, but until 1942, the Nazis made life significantly better for Joe Average German Dude, and a hell of a lot better for Loyal Party Member Dude. You cannot maintain power if you make life better for no one but yourself.)
> 
> The only question is, how much collateral damage are you willing to inflict, and to whom, to get your ‘good guys’ into play? (In a galaxy the size of the Star Wars one, the genocide of Alderaan is likely about the equivalent of the massacre of Hiroshima. Take that for whatever it’s worth.)
> 
> As Kylo and the Order get more up and running, and develop more of a political philosophy, you’ll get to see more of my ideals of a good/just regime, but even that will hurt people. Because we don’t live in a fairy tale, and there is no happily ever after, and the handsome prince and his lady aren’t actually magic and can’t make everything work out just by willing it. 
> 
> As Rey was thinking last chapter, it’s all a series of tradeoffs. It’s not that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter (though that’s obviously true), it’s that one man’s justice is ALWAYS bought at the cost of another man’s oppression. (Which, fairytale-land, and the real world, does it's best to gloss over.)
> 
> Anyway, that’s enough of that. More fun next week, when the Queen of the Order comes into her own!
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> Keryl


	18. The Queen of The Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to some... ahem... technical difficulties, not all of the images are rendered, yet. I'll continue to update as I get them into play.

 

2/6/2

 

Rey wanted to wake up rested, full of purpose, ready to put on Lady Ren like a dress, and then, somehow, get through the day without messing it up, and then peel her right back off again, and go crash with Kylo for a while.

Actually, she wanted to wake up spooned in Kylo’s arms, at home, both of them healthy, have a whole lot of sex, and then go back to sleep, and then have a normal, boring, mucking-about-with-the-kids-at-Lirium sort of day.

She really woke up in Mirina’s guest room, because, apparently guest rooms are a thing people who entertain regularly have. The bed is good. The room is comfortable. There are plenty of pillows, and the fabrics are soft, and… for a good ten to twenty seconds she can think about that before being submerged in a full body wave of _NERVOUS._

One step at a time. She tamps down nervous with instructions, and following them. Can’t get nervous about peeling back the blanket. No one can mess up peeling back the blanket and setting your feet on the floor.

So, get up, put on robe, eat, wash up, don’t wash hair, get back into robe, then hair, make up, get dressed, eat another snack, wait for Jon and Poe to show up…

Instructions help.

She can… drift probably isn’t the right word, but she can focus on each step, one bit at a time.

Get up. Push blankets back, put feet on the floor, pull on robe, go to the main room, interact with Mirina, who’s vastly too chipper this morning, eat…

Each one, one step at a time.

Get one done, move to the next, get that one done, move to the one after…

Keep going.

And one step at a time, the morning flows away, and Lady Ren, or at least a very nice dress, and pretty hair, and good makeup, comes into play.

 

 

* * *

It’s easier with Jon and Poe.

Mirina feels like she’s watching every second, looking for something out of place, something _wrong._ Some mark or fault she can fix and send Rey out in _perfect_ Lady Ren style.

Jon and Poe… Maybe she gets a little of that off of Jon, but mostly he’s eyeing Poe.

Though there’s probably a good reason for that… She’s blinking. Okay, she knew Jon cleaned up well for formal things. Actually, no ‘cleans up’ implies there are times when Jon doesn’t look spiffy and in charge. Jon _always_ (at least to Rey) looks ready to meet with the highest of the high delegations, and do it with style. Today’s no different, he carries himself with ease in his new Grand Marshall dress uniform, and… He just looks like he belongs in it.

His uniform is… Different. He either feels her thinking about it as they walk toward Kylo’s—her—throne room, or sees the way she’s looking. “If there’s any perk to no longer being the First Order, let alone having this rank, it’s that I don’t have to look like Imperial re-tread.”

She nods at that. She’s not sure, entirely, what she’s looking at. Trousers, boots, okay, she knows them. A white shirt, with a black cuffs, and an Order hex on the left cuff. Okay. She’s not sure if the next layer is a vest or armor. She can’t entirely tell if it’s a very fine flexible metal or fabric. She can see it’s got a high collar, and that four of his Order hexes are on the collar. Five hexes, that’s the mark of the Grand Marshall, she knows that. Over the vest he’s got…it’s sort of like a jacket, and sort of like a long vest, in black, with a darker black lapel, and no sleeves. “Current uniforms?”

“Are completely functional, have a full production line up and going, and well-stocked. We’ll eventually switch over, but not before using up the old ones.”

Rey nods. She knows Jon isn’t thinking of a version of what he’s wearing for the rest of the Order. Likely because this appears to be designed and cut to look excellent on _him._

So, she’s not, on any level, surprised that Jon looks well, like Jon, in a perfectly fitted outfit, showing off his new rank.

Poe was the surprise. She should have guessed that if Jon was in charge of dressing him, which is likely why he’s eyeing Poe up and down, keeping all of the details in mind, Poe would look… Dashing. It’s not a word she’s ever thought before, but… Poe’s dashing.

 

 

He’s got Poe in browns and coppers, and a long flowing cape, and there are… shoulder plates, at least that’s what she’s going to call them, and he looks… bigger. Not taller, so much, but less narrow, and… He looks _dashing._

Put the two of them together and… Hell, they can go off and be the Handsome Pilot and his Grand Marshal… That idea amuses Rey too much. She thinks a bit about the time when she and Kylo won’t be doing this, and wonders if the Handsome Pilot and his Grand Marshall… Or maybe the Master and the Master… Or The Master and Commander… Hell, it doesn’t matter.

They’re there, the three of them, supposedly posh and regal, and ready (maybe) to meet the K’Aran delegation and be gracious and useful and…

Meet the K’Aran delegation. She’s been doing her best not to think too much on that, but they’re in the elevator, heading down, toward the throne room, so there’s really not all that much else she can think about, and her stomach is tightening up, and the dress is too long and too hot, and her makeup feels fake and…

Poe squeezes her hand. “Out of your head, you. Stay right here, right now. That’s how flying works. Here, now, each heartbeat at a time. Deep breathing. The Force has you. Trust it.”

Rey swallows, squeezes his hand back, closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and lets herself feel the flow of it.

She’d told it to the kids. Find the balance point.

Her breath holds. Right here, right now, her and her alone…

She senses it. _There._

Her shoulders straighten a little, and Jon grins as he feels her pull up Lady Ren.

Poe kisses the back of her hand. “Okay, let’s go make ourselves, and your man, proud.”

 

* * *

She’s on the throne, and… It’s a fucking throne. She’s higher than everyone else in the room. Jon’s on her right, and Poe’s on her left, and they’re both two steps down so her head is higher than theirs.

 

 

She’s looking straight ahead as the doors to the elevator open, revealing the K’Aran delegation, led by Threepio, into Kylo’s… her… throne room.

“Showtime, Lady Ren,” Poe says, voice barely above a whisper, as the K’Aran delegation begins the long walk toward them.

Rey rolls her eyes a bit, and then says, very quiet, “Of course, Commander Dameron.”

“Head back, shoulders back, eyes forward. You can kick the ass of everyone in this room, and they’ll thank you if you do,” Poe adds, voice quiet.

Jon nods along, pleasantly smiling, and adds, also quietly, “That’s a pretty accurate read on their culture.” They’re halfway through the room. “Also remember, we _want_ them. If this works out, it will be good for us. They _need_ us. If this doesn’t work out, they’re looking at a massive civil war and millions dead. We are in a way better position than they are.”

Rey grits her teeth but keeps smiling. “Is that supposed to be comforting?” _If I fail today, millions will die._ Her pulse spikes at that.

Jon inclines his head a bit, nodding to one of the K’Aran dignitaries. “I find it so. No matter what happens, tomorrow we’ll be no worse off than we were yesterday. That isn’t true for them. They’re _motivated_ to make this work.”

Rey supposes that’s one way to look at it.

The walk is over.

The K’Aar of the K’Aran stands before her. He’s gray of hair, and getting spindly, with sun browned, weathered skin, but his posture is straight, and his eyes are clear.

He sees her, and she can feel the confusion, though he doesn’t let it show on his face.

Threepio says, voice clear and precise. “Mistress Rey of the Maji, Urathan K’Aar of the K’Aran.”

He nods to her.

She stands, and nods back to him.

_Showtime indeed._

 

 

* * *

For a few moments, Rey feels like this is going pretty well. K’Aar and his grandsons are in front of them. K’Aar nods to her. She nods to them. Threepio announces who she is, but not why she’s there. She takes two steps forward, and one step down, but as Jon had reminded her, she doesn’t descend all the way to the floor, she stays on the step so the K’Aar has to look up at her, and gently clasps hands with the K’Aar.

When he lets go, she says her little, “Welcome to the Order," routine, the K’Aar does his bit of saying how pleased he is by their hospitality, and it looks like it’s going fine.

She’s actually feeling like she can breathe.

Poe snags both of the grandsons, and heads them off to get a feel for them.

And what should have been the time where Kylo got to speak with K’Aar alone to get his feel for what’s happening starts off wrong the second it’s the two of them, Jon, Ilnor K’Rith, the K’Aar’s top adviser, and Threepio, alone.

K’Aar is glaring, both at his adviser, who likely set this up, who’s glaring at Threepio, who was likely his contact on this, and at Rey, who is very clearly _not_ Master Ren.

“We were supposed to meet with _Master Ren_.” _Who the bloody fuck are you?_ is unspoken but clear in his question. Apparently, “Mistress Rey of the Maji,” wasn’t precisely as enlightening as he’d have liked.

“And we’re well aware of that Urathan K’Aar, but he’s currently unavailable, so Lady Rey is here in his stead,” Jon says, smoothly.

The older man turns toward Rey, looking utterly unimpressed. “If I’d wanted to be judged by a child I could have picked one from home.”

Rey’s about to blush. She’s ten seconds into this and already failing and… Poe’s not here, but she can feel his advice, and how if he was here, he’d mentally kick her in the ass for blushing. She straightens her spine, makes her eyes cool, and then she looks at Urathan, really looks at him, trying to figure out what’s going on here, because it’s got to be deeper than her age.

And it is. He’s nervous. So nervous, if this doesn’t work, everything he’s ever lived for is going to fall apart. Part of it is that he’s _tired._ No… tired is a symptom. He’s heartsick. This was his one last hope, his only hope since his son died, and it’s falling apart. Under that, his son died, and he never got to grieve because he’s the K’Aar of the K’Aran and he has to _lead._ He’s _old._ He can’t keep up the fight much longer, on top of that, he doesn’t want to. He’s supposed to be enjoying a well-deserved retirement, finally getting to do all of the things he put off while he was building his empire. All of that fell to ashes when his son died, and now, if any sort of peace is going to hold he needs someone strong, someone younger and with more force, more power, than he can bring to bear to keep everyone in line.

And as best he can tell, the best option he has for that is Master Ren. Finding out Ren had moved into the protection and enforcement game was the first good news he’d seen since his son died, and now…

Now, he doesn’t have Ren. He’s got a pretty little girl, who… he’s not even sure if this is Ren’s wife, lover, friend, religious adviser, usurper, or what, standing in front of him, and worse, he doesn’t know if Ren’s brushing him off, has a better deal going, or is also about to lose his own head as the political wheels spin.

Find his needs, and use them to get what she needs… What the Order _needs._ Which means… she has to be strong. And she has to project stability. For K’Aar, because without a show of strength he can’t see her as someone who can save him.

“Take a walk with me, K’Aar?”

Granted, there isn’t exactly copious walking space here. They’re in Kylo’s not-exactly-a-throne-room… Courtyard, maybe. But it’s long enough to stroll with him to the far side and look at the stars spinning past them.

His eyes narrow, but he offers her his arm. He is, after all, _polite._ And whomever, _Mistress Rey_ may be, she’s obviously high status, _a lady._ She takes it, her hand on his, laying lightly on his, and focuses her Force. “Do you know the Jedi?”

His teeth are gritting. She’s tightening the hold on his hand. Not visibly. It’s all Force work, but she can feel the bones shift and grind against each other. She intensifies the hold.

 

 

His bones are old and aren’t enjoying the pressure she’s laying on them. Much more than a mere child, or a lady, should be able to apply. If she were a man, this would be an insult, an assault, but she’s a woman, and if he lets it be known that he’s in pain, he’ll lose status.

“Heard of them, Mistress,” grunts out of him.

“Good. One of the greatest, most powerful Jedi ever, was named Yoda. To this day, no one knows what Yoda was. There have been no others of his kind ever noted. That said, he was tiny, barely a meter tall. He walked with a cane, and hobbled a bit. Nothing about him looked imposing,” she can feel that she’s got five of the bones in his hand just on the verge of breaking. Rey holds it, there. Apparently, her healing sense is good for something else, too. “Many people looked at him, saw a tiny green thing, with wispy white hair, an archaic command of the Galactic standard tongue, and decided that he couldn’t bring any real power to a situation. Most of them died underestimating him.”

“Yes, Mistress,” hisses out of his throat as Rey relaxes her hold.

She makes her voice hard as she says, “I think you’ll find, that there’s _nothing_ Master Ren can do for you that I can’t.” Then she releases his hand from her Force.

He nods, pulls his hand away from her, rubbing it, flexing his fingers, wincing. “And, may I ask where your Lord is?”

She’s about to answer that, and then remembers that she has to bring her own power to bare here. It’s not enough to be here in Kylo’s stead. “He may be everyone else here’s Lord, but he’s not mine. He’s not my master. My love and balance, yes. My equal, definitely. But not my Master.”

“Ah.” He’s still waiting for an answer.

Rey takes the moment to dig a bit deeper into his mind. “Are you married, K’Aar?”

“Yes.”

“Long and well?”

He smiles at that. “Also yes.”

“And do you, on occasion, set out to do something, and have your wife look at you, and say, ‘No?’”

“Rarely.” Though she can feel his memory of the last time it happened is bright, and slightly embarrassed, in his mind.

“But when she says it, it’s for a good reason?”

“I’ve often found that to be true.”

Rey smiles a little. “He would be here if he could. He really would. He wanted to do this, and was looking forward to it. And if he knew it was happening today, he would have tried to drag himself out of bed and done himself, and every other human in this room no favors. He’s dealing with a particularly nasty and contagious stomach virus. Today, I said no. Tomorrow, the answer is still, no. The day after, if he is no longer contagious, it may be yes, but we’ll have to re-evaluate. When he’s fit to tend to something other than himself, he will, and until then, you get me.”

K’Aar smirks at that. “Would I be correct then in saying, that in addition to your balance and love, he is your husband?”

“Yes.”

“You and your man seem to be keeping that card close to the table. I don’t remember anything about a wedding. Or, for that matter, any official announcements about there being a Lady Ren.”

“In our faith we marry first, and have weddings later, and if you think your association with us is of value, I can assure you an invitation to said celebration will come your way when we hold it.”

“I’ll look forward to it, Lady Ren.”

“Lady Rey. My power is my own, not his borrowed or reflected.”

K’Aar nods, and looks out over the stars, and the ships, some tiny fighters flitting about on maneuvers, two huge, lumbering destroyers. “You’ll forgive me, Lady, but I do not see a fleet with your name on it, unless, of course, you chose to use his. And a fleet is what I’m going to need to provide enough of a threat to enforce whatever succession we may come up with here, today.”

Rey can feel Jon mentally screaming at her, _Don’t let him see you blink. Vader, the Force, the Death Star, tell him that story!_ “You are, of course, forgiven. And I am here, today, because he trusts me to make decisions for him and his empire. So, if you chose to go along with the solution we offer, that armada you see, and this ship you stand on, will of course be part of the deal. But, because he had the unfortunate luck to get bit by a nasty virus, you get me, in addition to him.”

The K’Aar nods, but it’s clear that he’s not immediately seeing why that’s a better deal than Kylo on his own.

“I wonder, sir, are you old enough to remember Darth Vader?”

“I never met him, though everyone my age and older remembers him.”

“And, you certainly remember the Death Stars,” Rey leads.

“I do.”

“It’s said, that shortly before the fall of the first Death Star, that Vader was called into a meeting with the men who created it. They cowed about the power of the Death Star, the greatest weapon ever built, and how, with it, the entire galaxy would be brought to heel. And, Vader stood there, and listened, and said to them, ‘This technological monstrosity is no match for the power of the Force.’ They apparently were unimpressed by that, but less than a week later, they all died, when a man with command of the Force shot a tiny little charge into a just as tiny little flaw in the system.”

K’Aar nods. “I have seen those history lessons, yes.”

Rey nods, too, and then she, very gently, and carefully levitates K’Aar a few centimeters into the air, before gently putting him back down. Then she smiles, a calm, gentle smile. “Ask me, my Lord, if I need a fleet to enforce my will.”

He swallows, hard. “That seems a silly question.”

She continues to smile at him. “My husband has his power base, and uses it well. I have mine and do so, too. I am here because he trusts me to act in his stead if need be, and today, needs be. But understand, I do not need the Order to take care of this, The Force is more than enough.”

“Yes, Lady Re—ay.”

“Thank you. Now, tell me about your grandchildren, and what needs to happen for a ‘good outcome’ today.”

K’Aar looks around, notices that they’ve taken a walk to within five meters of the ‘gracious luncheon’ portion of the meeting, and there is a table, set with five chairs, though only four place settings, with a collection of servers scurrying around, fast, because they’re seventeen minutes early.

As they get close to the table, Rey tries Kylo’s pulling the chair out with the Force trick, and is gratified to see that, like floating rocks, it’s really not that difficult.

K’Aar raises an eyebrow, and then, as they get close to the table, he pulls a chair out for her. “This is generally how we do it where I’m from.”

She smiles at that and sits down. “Thank you.” A server is sprinting toward the table, water pitcher in hand, and as soon as everyone is seated, he’s pouring. Rey looks to him, “Thank you…”

He blinks, not sure what to do here. “You’re welcome, my lady.”

“And are you just in charge of water today?”

“Just water. I think the chef is coming out soon to explain what the options are.”

“Wonderful.”

Ilnor rolls his eyes a bit. “Pulling out all the stops?”

Jon backhands that away easily. “Yes. You’re here because you need us. And we want this to work splendidly, so you’ll tell others how well we did, and they’ll take us up, too. Assuming this goes well, everyone wins. Now, sirs, we’ve read the briefings, we know what’s in the official reports, we know what’s in the _unofficial_ reports, now tell us what _isn’t_ so we can get you the happy ending you’re looking for.”

K’Aar takes a sip of his water. Then he shakes his head a bit. “Here’s the blunt version. No one knows which one of them is the oldest of the two, so I can’t do a quick birthright settlement. I love them both dearly, because I am their grampa. But as a leader…” He all but growls with frustration. “K’Oanan is bold and flash and strong and so _fucking stupid_ it’s embarrassing.” He glances to Rey, terrified. “Forgive my language, Lady… I’m used to speaking with men and expressing myself forcefully.”

Rey smiles at him. “I’ve heard the word before. Kylo's been known to, on occasion, utter it. It’s possible I may have, under duress and stress, even said it, too.”

Jon begins to laugh at that, and a beat later the K’Aar does, too. Threepio and K’Rith don’t seem to know what to do with this.

“It’s possible my wife has, too. Under duress and stress, of course.”

“Of course.” Rey smiles. “And your other grandson?”

“K’Ahauna got all the brains, but is so terrified of making a wrong decision, he makes no decisions at all. My son, their father, was a good man, and beyond that, a well-liked one, and my warlords were happy to back him into the next generation, unfortunately, like your man, he caught a nasty virus, but he wasn’t smart enough to stay in bed, and died a week later.”

Rey lays her hand on his, a comforting touch this time, and gently says, “I’m sorry.”

She sees the K’Aar’s expression tighten for a moment. He nods, teeth clenched, then clears his throat and continues, “Now I’ve got seventy-three clans jockeying for power, playing to each boy’s strengths and weaknesses, trying to turn one of the two of them into figureheads they can rule. And if I could get most of them behind either one, it would probably… in the long run… be okay. Rocky to start, but…” He looks at Jon and K’Rith … “I know those two know this, but maybe, my lady, you don’t. There’s nothing so gloriously stupid as a twenty-two-year-old man. They’re old enough to think they know all the answers, and they are genuinely old enough to know _some_ of the answers, but young enough to not know the difference between some and all.”

Jon and the K’Rith both sort of nod at each other.

“As of this point, my experience with twenty-two-year-old men is somewhat limited. But, I can’t imagine that Kylo would challenge your statement. He’s got a story or two of his own involving silly twenty-two-year olds.”

K’Aar looks amused by that. “The Great Lord Ren was a twenty-two-year-old at one point, then?”

“A decade ago.”

K’Aar nods at that. “Thirty-two is a good age. Still young enough to be bold, young enough to be _strong_ , but old enough to understand the mistakes you’ve made and not make them again.” He glances at Rey, and then at her very flat tummy, and back to her face. “It’s a good age to start a family. Wise enough to raise children. Young enough to play with them.”

Rey’s not sure what to do with that, so she smiles at him, and says, “So, Lord K’Aar,” she feels Jon flash her the thought _K’Aar is his title. You just called him Lord King._ She mentally winces, but keeps talking, “ideally, how does this situation work out for your grandsons, and any children they may have?”

He sighs, looks at the water glass, it’s clear he’d like something stronger, and a moment later, another server is at their side, looking hurried, with a tray of wines and other beverages that sound impressive and likely are, but Rey doesn’t know what they are. She stays with tea.

Once he’s got his _stronger_ drink, (Llethein Brandy with a citronen twist) he says, “Ideally, one of the two of them gathers enough backers that the other one’s backers decide that they can’t win, so it’s not worth the fight.”

“Right now they are almost equally split, which is why we’re seeking to bring you in. If we can… overbalance the scales so to say, that should avoid a massive war,” K’Rith replies.

“And do you, honestly, not have a preference as to which one… wins… for lack of a better word?” Rey asks.

The K’Aar looks tired. “I wish they’d been born one child. As a man, they’d be ideal, bold and smart. As they are, it’s just a questions of whose folly is preferable, and given their backers… It won’t matter much. None of my warlords are suicidal, stupid, or twenty-two. Right now, it’s worth risking a fight, because they can still _win._ Once it’s clear they can’t, they should fall in line, and if they do, they’ll find a way to work around each boy’s shortcomings.”

“What will the losing grandson do?” Jon asks.

“K’Ahauna will sulk, but toe the line. He’ll become a valuable servant to his brother, if his brother will listen to him, but that’s a big if. K’Oanan will run away. Leave the kingdom, see if his backers will go with him, but they won’t. I imagine he’ll be rather surprised by that. He’s genuinely sure they actually think he’ll be a good K’Aar. Once that’s settled in, he may turn pirate and make things difficult, but he won’t be able to rise a full war. And, in time, his brother and his advisers will outfight him," The K'Aar says.

“That sounds like K’Ahauna is the more suitable of your grandsons,” Threepio says.

“And with your backing he may be. He’s also the one in the weaker position. Not by much, but by enough.”

Rey nods.

Ilnor K'Rith continues, “And that position is made worse by the fact that he just refuses to make a decision until he cannot possibly put it off any longer. I’ve never met a boy so prone to dither. His instincts are generally good, but… He got one wrong, a serious one, when he was younger, and since then he’s dithered and dithered and dithered.”

“What did he get wrong?” Jon asks.

“A troop placement. It was a sim, but he was sure he was right, but he wasn’t, and got his entire army slaughtered. Again, it was a sim, no on actually died. The lesson that sim is meant to teach is that you cannot, always, win. There is _no correct_ troop placement for that sim. You cannot win it. You can minimize your casualties, but you _can’t_ win. He spent months running it over and over and over again, and… It seems to have shattered him. He’s never been sure of anything ever since.”

“With the confidence of a few wins, he might be better?” Rey asks. Though she feels a bit of kindred spirit in a man who, not being able to win, is terrified of playing.

The K'Aar replies, “He might. But he’d have to actually play the game to win. The only reason he hasn’t capitulated to his brother is that doing so would require him to make a decision which would disappoint some of his backers. These days the merest hint of someone being irked with him sends him into a sulk.”

“How is he handling your feelings on this?” Jon asks.

“Mostly by hiding and writing stories in which he runs away to become an actor.”

“Is there any shot of him actually doing it?” Threepio asks.

K’Aar laughs. Then he takes another drink. “He currently doesn’t have a way to get off planet, and no theater troop on our world would have him. That said, his backers have pointed out that if he wants to _act_ they’re more than willing to write the script for him, all he’s got to do is stand up and do it. The role of a life-time, K’Aar of the K’Aran.”

“The role he doesn’t want?” Rey asks.

Ilnor ways, “Maybe. Sometimes, K’Ahauna seems like he likes it. When there are people around him who want him to be the K’Aar, he likes it. When they aren’t, it seems like he’s about to crumble under the pressure. At the very least, he’s under no illusions as to why his backers want him.”

It’s Threepio who asks, “Tell us about their lead backers. If it really doesn’t matter which boy we choose, then which of their handlers may be preferable?”

“T’Karnan and T’Chondra.” Rey’s dying here, _all_ of the names sound identical to her, but she can feel Jon and Threepio have them down. “They were my son’s two highest ranked warlords. Each of them are family friends. The boys grew up with them as Uncles.”

Rey can glom onto that. “So this isn’t just a political issue, it’s… saving your family, isn’t it? If someone else makes the decision…”

K’Aar glances to his diplomat, and then nods. “A leader should always be willing to make the hard decisions. These are my grandsons, being backed by men I helped raise along with my son. I… can make this decision. I do not want to.”

“And this way, none of them can cry favoritism,” Jon adds.

“Exactly.”

“And it increases the odds that whichever one we pick, the other will go along peacefully," Rey says.

The K’Aar nods at that, too. “If I can get both advisers behind one boy, things will, eventually, transition smoothly.”

Rey looks at the adviser who is with them. “But they aren’t here?”

The K’Aar inclines his head a bit. “I thought it would be valuable to have the boys spend some time with each other, without their ‘dearest Uncles.’ And, it occurred to me, that… since you offer… a place… for anyone who wants one… Perhaps, if one of them won’t be in the business of the K’Aran system, maybe they might fit in here?”

“A refuge for wayward princes?” Jon asks.

“Your Master did well with that, did he not?” Ilnor replies.

“He has,” Rey replies. “That said, wayward princes who come here enlist just like everyone else. The day you join the Order is the day your old life becomes nothing beyond memories.”

The K’Aar inclines his head. “And that may be exactly what one of my boys needs. Or not. We’ll see. It’s good to have options, I’d think.”

“It is,” Jon replies. “It’s also good to know what they are. Part of the goal of the Order, and of our space here is to provide a platform for people to work with each other, to achieve their goals. Perhaps, at some point, there could be a K’Aran embassy here. A place for the K’Aran dynasty to make deals, learn about others—“

“Stow an extra prince where he can’t make too much trouble,” The K’Aar adds.

“That would likely depend on how much of an allowance you put him on and the leeway offered him by his entourage,” Jon replies. “Our job would mostly be to keep him comfortable and breathing.”

“We are, after all, in the security business,” Threepio adds.

“If he were to enlist, but that would have to be voluntary,” Rey adds, “he likely couldn’t get in much trouble at all.”

“Or he could be fatally chopped in half,” Ilnor says.

“If he’s the kind of man who goes so afoul of the Order’s laws that we need to chop him in half, you’re better off without him, and without having to deal with him personally,” Rey says, staring Ilnor in the eye.

That response seems to please the K’Aar.

And Ilnor is _thinking_ about that. Hard.

He sips his drink as the server comes to them with small plates of little nibbles. More of that appetizer salad that Rey and Kylo had had with Myrton. It’s good. Rey makes herself eat slowly. She paces herself to Jon, who is good at taking a bite, talking, and then taking another one.

After tasting, and chatting a bit about the food, Rey asks, “Just to make sure, splitting your holdings and creating a… dual system with an ironclad peace treaty…”

“Would fail within days of my death. Likely within hours of launching my body to the stars.”

“Even if we offer to hold the peace? Immediate, overpowering force against any aggressor?” Rey offers.

The K’Aar thinks about it, but doesn’t say anything. Rey can feel that he doesn’t love or like the idea, but it’s tenable.

“Even if it could hold, we don’t want it,” Ilnor says. “Urathan spent decades building up this system. He and his have worked ceaselessly to turn a loose assortment of tribes and planets into a dynasty. To see it split…”

All of them can feel the pain at that idea. Rey looks at Urathan. He built this for his son, for his family, and the idea that not only is his boy gone, but the system he built for him, too… It’s too much to bear.

“We will make sure any solution we produce involves your holdings staying united,” Threepio says.

“Thank you.” The K’Aar looks at Rey, seriously, “And do you have any thoughts of how this is going to work out?”

“Not many, not as of yet. My friend, Poe, is meeting with your boys. And before I consult with him, I’ll meet them, too. From there, we’ll have the start of a plan.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

Poe’s leading K’Ahauna and K’Oanan through the _Supremacy._ They look gobsmacked. K’Ahauna’s willing to let it show. He’s gaping at the sheer scale and size of the thing. K’Oanan is trying to cover how impressed he is by looking bored.

Poe mentally rolls his eyes. Awe _is_ the appropriate response to a ship the size of the _Supremacy._ The person who isn’t awed by the _Supremacy_ the first time he sees it is fearfully stupid or completely lacking in imagination.

“Either of you two fly?” Poe asks them.

“We haven’t been trained,” K’Ahauna replies as K’Oanan’s saying, “It’s inappropriate for a prince to fly himself anywhere.”

“Come on,” Poe says. “We’ve got sims here.”

K’Ahauna looks intrigued at that, a little excited, and K’Oanan’s… that’s interesting. His sabbac face is good. Poe’s better at reading people than he is at hiding his emotions, and he can see K’Oanan’s nervous about this. He’s afraid that Poe’ll see him be bad at it.

Poe had mostly been interested in just letting them do something fun, but… He decides that he really should push them through their paces in this thing. Neither of them have done it before, and it’ll be telling to see how they respond to something difficult not going their way.

“In this part of the galaxy, being able to fly yourself is a survival skill. Like… What’s the sort of thing that any adult male is supposed to be able to do where you are?”

“Fight,” both of the boys say at once.

“This is like fighting. If you can’t fly yourself… You’ve got to be able to fly yourself. You’re not a man if you can’t fly yourself.” Poe knows he’s got them. Neither of them want him to see them as boys. “Come on, let’s go try the sims, it’s fun.”

“What do you fly, Master Poe?”

“Right now, I’ve got Micah. He’s not the sexiest thing to ever skitter through the heavens, but he’ll get the job done. Before that, I had a T-70 X-Wing.”

It’s clear the boys don’t know what a T-70 is and are vague on the idea of X-Wings, too.

“It’s a fighter. A tight, sexy little thing with s-foils for greater range of fire, four KX12 laser cannons, with single, dual, and quad firing modes, dual proton canons, top speed of 1,100 klicks per hour, and hyperdrive.”

They’re staring at him, eyes glazed.

“It was _really fast_ and I could shoot through ten meter thick durasteel with my lightest gun. The big ones could take out the armor shielding on a Star Destroyer.” Not strictly true, but true enough.

That means something to the boys. They look impressed. More impressed by Poe, too.

“Are you a warrior, Commander Poe?” K’Ahauna asks.

“I am in the cockpit of a ship. Outside of the cockpit of a ship, I’m more of a scrapper.”

“Scrapper?” K’Oanan asks.

“The kind of guy who fights mean and dirty. I prefer not to fight. I’d rather talk, but if you’ve pissed me off so bad I’ve pulled a blaster or blade on you, I’m not messing around. One of is us going to walk away, and the other is going to stop breathing.”

“And you are still here with us,” K’Ahauna says.

“And I’m still here. And they aren’t.” His voice is mild as he says that. His eyes aren’t. He sort of wishes Jon were here to see this, because he’s now got two man puppies following him around like he’s God’s gift to the _Supremacy._

A few minutes later he says, “Okay here we are. Order flight training.” Fortunately, he can see a few empty sims. So, looking like he belongs, and that this is his personal playground, he just strides right over, slides into the nearest one, and begins to flip it on. “K’Ahauna, slide on in, this one is ready to go. Day one, lesson one. Just follow the instructions on the screen.”

He hops out and grabs the one next to it, aware of the officer heading toward them, and the wave of _What the fuck is this?_ coming off of him.

“In you go, K’Oanan.” He pats the younger man on the shoulder, and before the officer can get within easy speaking voice, Poe hits him with, “At ease, Lieutenant.”

Before the lieutenant can even think about it, his body is responding.

Poe smirks a bit. In _well-trained-men_ a good voice, a better stare, and the right word will work wonders. Just by barking that out, the lieutenant has already decided Poe’s not just an officer, but one who outranks him. By a _lot._

He’s mentally smirking at that, too. _Really, not bad for a flyboy from Yavin IV._

“What’s the issue Lieutenant?”

Act like you belong, like _you’re_ the one where you need to be, and everyone else is an imposition, and they’ll bend for you.

“I’m sorry, sir. Those sims… No one is supposed to be in them, right now, sir.” The poor man looks so horribly embarrassed to have to say this.

Poe leans against K’Oanan’s sim, and grins. “I’m sure you’re right. I’m Commander Dameron, here with the K’Aran delegation, Grand Marshall Frakes and Master Ren have me entertaining our guests, while their grandfather meets with Lady Ren and General Threepio to discuss matters of state. Lieutenant” He reads the nametag, “OP-9987, can you tell our guests about our sim program?”

Lt. OP-9987 snaps into attention. “Yes, sir.”

Poe gestures to the boys to get them out of the sims and listening to the lieutenant. They listen, nod, K’Ahauna asks good questions, and K’Oanan continues to try and make it look like he knows everything about everything.

When they’re done, Poe smiles at OP-9987 and says, “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll be sure to mention to the Grand Marshall how helpful you were today.” And, the kicker is, he will. Might as well make sure this doesn’t bite the man later. “Now, K’Oanan, K’Ahauna, let’s turn these babies on and let you feel what it’s like to fly.”

 

 

* * *

A minute into the sim, Poe feels like he knows all he needs to know about each boy.

K’Oanan’s whooping with pleasure as he glides his sim, fast and easy, through imaginary space. He’s got a natural touch for this, and, apparently no natural fear response. That’s a core trait for a really good combat fighter. It’s also a core trait for a really _dead_ combat fighter.

Poe mentally sighs. This is how he used to fly before Micah.

K’Ahauna is going slow. He’s checking and rechecking and checking again before he makes any move. He, like his brother, does seem to have something of a natural touch for this. The press up to go down and left to go right controls don’t appear to be giving him any troubles. The fact that he won’t turn until he’s checked and checked and checked and…

Unfortunately, that’s another way to end up with a very dead pilot.

Put him in a battle and they’d shoot him to pieces before he’d pulled the trigger on anything.

Poe reaches into K’Ahauna’s machine. “Here, let’s spice it up a bit.” Maybe upping the stakes will help. He adds other fliers to the mix, and attacking fighters.

K’Ahauna is dead in twenty-three seconds.

He does the same for K’Oanan, with similar results. K’Oanan at least took some with him. But, he didn’t check enough, and got sniped from the left. K’Ahauna checked too many times, and got sniped from behind before he got a shot off.

K’Ahauna looks ashamed. He’s worried about not learning it fast enough, and making the wrong decision, and… He’s waiting for Poe to tell him he’s failed, and that he’s a miserable pilot, and he’ll never be a _man_ by Poe’s standards. Poe mentally winces. He’s seen this kicked puppy look before in a bunch of other new recruits. Generally his job is to jolly them out of it. Other trainers, ones with a natural knack for it, can kick asses and grind them down, his job is to make them feel like they can do whatever it is.

He resets the sim. “We all get shot down the first time. It’s normal. Go at it again. Keep your eyes moving, and… They’re laser weapons, you’re not going to run out of charges, so just shoot everything you see.”

“I’d hit my own men,” K’Ahauna says.

“In a real battle, yes, but right now, you’re learning to aim, and aim fast and accurate, so right now, the second you see something, shoot. Once you can hit what you’re aiming at, you can afford to get picky.”

K’Ahauna nods, and gets back to it.

K’Oanan’s angry. He’s glaring at the machine. “It doesn’t work.”

Poe doesn’t roll his eyes. He generally didn’t have to handle the know-it-alls. And he’s been lucky enough with the Lirium kids that they tend not to pull that shit. Possibly because in a place where more than half of the kids around you can read your mind, pretending you know it all just doesn’t work.

“It’s supposed to put the fighters where I can see them so I can practice aiming.”

“Of course, K’Oanan. If you like, I can drop it down to the basic level where it will keep the fighters in the front 45 degrees.”

“That wasn’t the basic level?”

Of course it was, but he can make it easier. He can put it on just a flight simulator and leave off the firing capacity all together. That said, he’s feeling no need to argue with the kid. “No. I thought you’d find the challenge invigorating.”

“Oh… yes…” He’s looking quite satisfied at that. “Can you make it harder?”

Poe leans in, presses the buttons until he’s set it again at where it was before. “Certainly. Just keep your eyes moving, and shoot with abandon. It’ll be fun.”

“Oh, it is fun! When we get back, I think I’m going to tell them to arrange for pilot training for me.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” At the very least, doing so might take care of the which-one-of-these-two-will-run-things-when-Pops-dies aspect of this. He figures that if K’Oanan gets serious about flight training, his life expectancy is going to drop like a rock in 3G.

 

 

* * *

After taking them through the sim a few times, and getting them to the point where they can both survive from beginning to end of the basic combat level, Poe begins to wander the boys toward the F-deck. Feed them up, see how they deal with being in public, around lots of other people, how they treat people who are ‘lesser’ than they are…

That sounds like a plan.

Then back to Rey.

“This ship is immense,” K’Ahauna says, twenty minutes later, when they’re _still_ on an elevator going up.

“I’d call it a city. It’s a flying city, not a ship.”

“That’s a problem when you need to get somewhere fast,” K’Oanan says.

“You aren’t wrong. Though like with most cities, most people live near where they work. How about you two? You live…”

“In a palace outside the capitol city,” K’Ahauna says.

“Do you work in the palace?” Poe asks.

“Oh, yes, of course,” K’Oanan replies, quickly, too quickly. Poe knows he’s lying, but he’s not sure if he’s lying about location or the idea that he _works._

“Where do you live, Commander Dameron?”

“All over. My home is my ship, and it goes wherever I’ve got an urge to go.”

K’Ahauna looks wistful at that. “That must be… wonderful.”

“There’s a lot I like about it, but it can also be lonely. BB-8, that’s my mech droid, is good company, but he’s still a droid.”

“Just you in that ship?” K’Oanan asks.

“A lot of the time.” The elevators open, and they’re on the F-Deck. “That said, I’m not attached to the ship. I do leave it, and,” he gestures, “I have found other places with people in them.”

 

 

* * *

“They don’t salute you or come to attention,” K’Oanan says, eyes wide, a low, shocked simmer of anger on Poe’s part in his tone as they walk through the deck.

“Be calm, kid.” That annoys K’Oanan, too. He doesn’t like being called ‘kid’ or ‘boy.’ It does please his brother. “We’re on the F-Deck. Everyone here is off duty, or maybe looking for someone off-duty. This is their home, where they play and relax. Being a good commander lesson the first: Treat thy subordinate’s off time as sacred and do not trod upon it unless it cannot be avoided.”

“Why? They’re there to serve you.” K’Oanan says, petulant, not liking this at all.

“No, it’s their _job_ to serve you, and when they’re off duty, they aren’t working, so back off. You don’t want your granddad barging in on you at whatever time you like to sleep demanding to attend him at once, so don’t do that to the people under you.”

“What if they don’t have off time?” K’Ahauna asks.

“Then the first thing you do when you get home is hire another one, or take care of it yourself for ten hours or so a day, and at least a few days a cycle, and make sure they’ve got some off time. No one does a good job if they’re on all the time.” He looks around. “This didn’t pop up in the two years since Kylo took over. Even _Snoke_ understood his men needed off time. What do you two study? You know, your how to be a king stuff?”

“Politics, history, economics—“ K’Ahauna begins.

“Fighting, battle tactics, hand to hand weapons, command skills,” K’Oanan continues.

Poe nods at that. “Okay, I’m going to suggest something. Ask Grandpa who he thinks really _bad_ commanders are, and then go study them. Learn how _not_ to do it.”

“Who do you think were especially bad commanders?” K’Ahauna asks.

“I think Snoke was one.”

“Didn’t he rule for a thousand years?” K’Oanan adds.

“Yes, but I know the guy who cut him in half pretty well, so I’m going to guess the only reason he stuck around that long is that it took a really long time for him to tangle with another Force user who could stand up to him. Not because he was any good at command.”

“And even he knew his men needed off time?” K’Oanan says.

“Even he knew his men needed off time, things to amuse themselves, good food and places to live and… He was a shit boss, and he broke more men and things than anyone has any right to, but even he was aware of the fact that he had _people_ working for them, and people have needs.

“If you ignore your people’s needs for too long, they’ll make you pay for it.”

The boys think about that, as Poe steers them toward a food cart with a long line next to it. “Lesson the second, if fifty people are willing to queue up for something to eat, and there’s piles of other places to eat around, whatever’s at the end of that line is going to be good.”

 

 

* * *

It was. Poe’s not sure what it is. He just asked for three of them and handed one each to the boys. They’re some sort of pasty filled with… veggies and protein and a thick, savory spicy sauce, and… When he comes back, he’ll try to find this cart again.

“What’s the third lesson?” K’Ahauna asks as they continue to walk through the F-Deck eating their pasties.

It takes Poe a moment to think, and then he says, “Explain you orders. Unless it’s a literal, ‘we’re all gonna die if this doesn’t happen now’ situation, and those are awfully rare, if someone asks what you’re doing, or why, explain. It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes, it’ll make you look reasonable, and even if it’s not satisfying to the person asking, it likely will be to the people around him.”

“And if they still don’t like it?” K’Ahauna asks.

“Listen. Find out why. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to accede to their plans. But if you explain and you listen, you’ll have an easier time getting people to go along with you, and likely a better plan when you’re done.” Poe looks around the F-Deck. “There’s got to be what… Twenty-thousand people roaming around here. And, sure, one of them has to be the smartest of the bunch. But I know it’s not me, and it isn’t either of you, and, honestly, it won’t be the same person on every topic. So, the more you talk, the more you listen, the more you can take advantage of the brains around you, and trust me, you’ll need them.”

K’Ahauna is listening. K’Oanan isn’t. He’s… Poe follows his gaze, ogling a very pretty Captain, not even remotely subtly, he’s almost drooling. Judging by the letters instead of a name on her uniform, she came up through the Hux method, and could likely castrate him in less than thirty seconds if she weren’t feeling properly respected.

Poe’s _almost_ tempted to give him a little nudge and tell him to say hello, but… He’s supposed to be showing them a good time, not tormenting any poor soul that K’Oanan’s going to try to chat up. And one glance at the Captain, who appears to be having a good time with her buddies, and is not, on any level Poe can see, interested in having a horny puppy come up and drool on her, tells Poe that while letting K’Oanan free on her might be a good time for him and K’Ahauna, it won’t be fun for her.

So, instead, he gently taps the bottom of K’Oanan’s chin, and says, “Mouth closed unless you’re about to put some food in it. Women generally don’t appreciate being drooled over, and that one’s really not going to appreciate your attention.”

K’Oanan blinks, shudders, and scowls. “She’s too thin, anyway.” He looks around. “What’s wrong with the women here? They’re… all men!”

Poe laughs at that. “I think they’d disagree.” He certainly does.

K’Oanan’s shaking his head. “They’re… strong and lean and thin and… Not a single one of them is pregnant, and…”

He’s wrong about that. In easy eyesight, Poe can see a few who aren’t built like Rey. And he’s fairly sure that two of them are pregnant, but they’re likely the wives or daughters of officers. He doesn’t think you can be pregnant and on-duty with the Order, but he doesn’t know that for sure.

“Given how you were staring, it looks like you like men, then. Wipe the drool off your chin and eat your pasty.”

K’Oanan leaps up, apparently that’s an insult where he comes from, and Poe just rolls his eyes. K’Ahauna’s laughing his ass off next to them, enjoying this way too much.

“Say that to my face.”

Poe, sitting down, legs wide, puts his pasty down, and laconically glances up at K’Oanan. “Kid, if you start a fight with me, your brother’s going to end up ruling your kingdom.”

“Because you’ll decide against me?” He sounds ready to chance it.

“Because they’ll have to mop up your remains with a squeegee and bury you in a jam jar. Tell me you aren’t genuinely so fucking stupid as to get into a fight with a Commander on his own ship in the middle of thousands of armed officers. Holy Force man, yank your shaft out of your head, tuck it back in your pants where it belongs, and start thinking with your brain.”

K’Oanan goes pale, glances around at, as Poe said, literally _thousands_ of armed officers, swallows, and sits down.

“Good choice,” Poe says.

K’Oanan finishes his pasty in silence.

 

 

* * *

The serving staff cleans up the remains of the ‘gracious luncheon’ part of the meeting, and Rey’s feeling like she’s got a pretty good read on the K’Aar.

And, more than that, she likes him, too.

Maybe he likes her, also.

Granted, he seems to like her in the way he’d like any sort of marvel. She’s so far outside of his normal understanding of how the universe is supposed to work, that he doesn’t know what to do with her, so, apparently, he decided to just enjoy her.

She’s fine with that.

She looks to Jon, “I understand that Poe will return with the boys soon?”

Jon nods. “Then he’ll present them to you, and you can talk to them a bit. Then we’ll reconnoiter, have a chat, and then bring you in to talk more. In the meantime, K’Aar, you are welcome to the run of the _Supremacy._ Threepio will gladly take you wherever you might want to go.”

“I do recommend the F-Deck, or, perhaps, if we may be planting a seed of a possible embassy here, you might like to see where we’d think to put it,” Threepio says.

“I might, perhaps, be interested in that.”

They hear the elevator door open, and right on time, Poe and the boys, and… Rey’s not sure where they were lurking, but a collection of Threepio’s diplomats appear to phase into existence around them.

Rey’s about to start off to meet them midway, but she feels a gentle touch on her wrist. Jon’s. She can read what he’s telling her. She’s the _queen._ They come to _her._

So, she lets them.

Poe’s grinning at her. “Have a good time, Commander?” she asks when he’s in voice range.

“I think we did,” he replies.

This isn’t her first view of the boys, but this is the first time she’s ‘interacting’ with them. She’s not sure _why_ they did it that way, but assumes it’s some flourish of K’Aran culture she’s not aware of.

Once the boys are a bit closer, Poe turns to the first of them. He has longer hair, and his outfit is blue. “Mistress, this is K’Ahauna, Prince of the K’Aran dynasty.”

Rey nods to him, and then she’s pulled up short. K’Ahauna offers her his hand. That’s… not part of the script, not as she remembers it, but she’s not feeling any sense of alarm or ‘tread carefully’ from Jon or Poe, so she takes his hand.

He smiles at her, gently lifts her hand to his lips, and kisses the back of it. Then he lets go, looks her in the eyes, and says, “My pleasure, Mistress.”

She can feel from the K’Aar that this is… mildly salacious. K’Ahauna has walked just up to the edge of proper behavior, but hasn’t stepped over the line.

Rey nods at him again, and then turns her attention to his brother. He’s wearing his blonde hair short, and his outfit which is tighter and more… modern… Rey guesses, is green.

“And this is K’Oanan,” Poe adds.

K’Oanan takes her hand, like his brother, but unlike his brother he flips it over, brings it to his lips, and then gently _licks_ her wrist.

Rey’s eyes close for a second, and she’s not sure how to respond to that. She’s fairly sure that _that_ is not a standard K’Aran greeting.

He looks up at her, wide green eyes, screaming with mischief. “Oh, my lady. I would know you, and offer you my unflagging, indefatigable service.” And then he kisses her palm.

Or, at least he starts to, but his grandfather, breaking out of his shock, and the all encompassing wave of mortification, moving faster than any man his age looks like he could, grabs him by the back of the neck, and bodily tosses him a few meters away, hissing, “This is a married woman and you are a guest in her husband’s home. Would you shame all of us?” He turns his attention to Rey. “Lady Rey… I am… _so sorry._ ”

Everyone else in the room is staring between K’Oanan and her, and then just her, waiting to see what Rey will do with this. She can feel everyone on the K’Aran side of things, besides K’Oanan, who’s for the most part, enjoying the spectacle, is _horrified._

Rey inclines her head. She wants to make sure she understands _exactly_ how far over the line K’Oanan went. “Threepio, I’ve apparently lost the idiom between our native languages, what was Lord K’Oanan offering me?”

She can feel Threepio blush, metal face be damned.

“Mistress… He was… Looking to know you carnally, and the services he was offering were sexual.”

Rey nods, and steps over to K’Oanan, who is lying on the floor. She looks down at him, coolly, feeling what he was attempting and why he did it. Partially, it’s blind stupid lust. She’s a young female, and apparently he’s still in what Kylo refers to as the ‘shaft on legs’ part of life. Partially, it’s putting her in her place, showing her that he’s a man and she’s a woman, and women are for bedding, not ruling. Partially, it’s showing the people around, the ones he assumes will judge his worthiness to be the next K’Aar, that he’s bold and willing to take risks.

He’s grinning up at her, not chastised at all by his grandfather’s scolding.

“You are young and stupid and horny. You wish to show me you are bold, willing to take risks to get what you want, and what you think your people need. Boldness is _a_ virtue. Sometimes. Used wisely. The willingness to take risks to get what you need is also a virtue, again, used _wisely_.”

“A strong woman needs a bold man,” he says, looking up at her, a grin on his lips and a smirk in his eyes.

“And I have one. One who risked considerably more for me than a bloodied lip and an irked grandfather.” K’Oanan licks his lips. They aren’t bloodied. Yet. In one move, Rey yanks him up with her Force, holds him steady, slaps him open handed across the face, making sure her marriage band catches his lip, and then drops him. His lip is bleeding, now. “One wise enough to know when to take that risk. One who _earned_ my company, instead of asking for it with an impertinent quip.

 

 

“If you live long enough, your virtues may come in handy, but _only_ if you live long enough.” And right now, it’s abundantly clear that she’s more than capable of ending him if she desires. “Keep letting your shaft make the decisions, and you _won’t_ live long enough for your boldness to be a virtue. Are we clear?”

Rey can feel this isn’t working the way she hoped. He’s gazing up at her, moon in his eyes, lust spiking his blood. “Yes, Mistress.”

 

 

* * *

Rey sits with Jon and Poe, in Kylo’s office.

Poe gives his report on the boys, and wraps up with, “And… yeah. Well, we all saw that. He’s… easily distracted… I guess is the polite way to put it.”

“’So fucking stupid,’ is how his grandfather put it,” Rey adds.

Poe snerks a quick laugh at that. “Yeah, well… He’s not _stupid_ in the sense of can’t learn. I put them on the flight sims, and he picked it up quick enough. There’s likely the making of a decent pilot in K’Oanan.”

“If he doesn’t get killed when someone comes up on his blind spot,” Jon adds. Poe’d already told them about the results of the sim test.

Poe inclines his head.

“In K’Oanan’s… extremely limited… defense,” Colonel Jefferies says, “We did not introduce you as Lady Ren, and in his culture, unattached women are considered fair game.”

“Prey to be hunted?” Rey asks.

“Basically,” Threepio replies. “But, as you also saw, his brother and grandfather had the sense to not immediately proposition you, so… fair game you might have been, but they were cautious enough to understand we wouldn’t have brought you up just to entice them.”

The other advisers nods at that. Jon glances between them, and then says, “Well… Supposedly we’re in the sorting this out business. Thoughts?”

And then the talking begins.

Rey listens, and listens, and doesn’t say much. They bang ideas around, play with them, ask Poe more questions about the boys. Flight sims are recorded for training purposes, so they pull them up to see how the boys did with them. They talk more, and after an hour are starting to get the shape of a plan into place.

They are, given the political climate of K’Aar, likely offering a very good plan. They’ll back K’Oanan. None of them really like that, because, well, he’s a twit. But a twit who’s willing to make decisions is preferable to the timid one. (Or, as Poe put it when he was showing off the flight sims, ‘The guy who makes the hasty, gut decision _might_ get himself and the people around him killed. The man who makes no decision _will._ ) So, to counter that, they’ll set his grandfather as a Lord Regent for five years, meaning that until he’s twenty-seven, he’ll be able to make decisions, and his grandfather will have absolute veto power over them.

Probably not ideal, but as good as it’s going to get, and with any luck, by the time K’Oanan is twenty-seven, he’ll have learned a bit of humility and some manners, and won’t be a walking shaft.

Hopefully.

It’s just… That doesn’t feel _right_ to Rey. There’s… something here, something she can’t quite touch, not yet, but…

She lets the talking heads talk around her, figuring out how best to support K’Oanan, and how to arrange their men to make sure his transition is smoothly handled, also where on K’Aar to plop a recruiting station or six.

Jon’s talking about how, if they can get K’Ahauna on the _Supremacy_ and in charge of the Embassy here, that he’ll be in a place where he can do minimum damage, and maybe, over time start to get more comfortable in his own skin, and who knows, eventually he might be able to do some decent ruling on his own, and they can put him into play, then.

Rey breathes deep and easy, letting herself calm, and just _feel_ it.

After a moment, she says, “Has the K’Aran society ever had a co-regent?”

The talking heads are all too polite to talk over Lady Ren, but it’s clear they’re quite surprised that she’s offering up an idea. They were under the impression they’d make the decision and she’d just… look good and provide it.

It’s also clear they’re under the impression that co-regent, beyond the current level of K’Aar having veto power over K’Oanan is something that just… isn’t fitting.

But she can feel Jon warming to where she’s going to take this.

And Threepio looks intrigued.

“What are you thinking, Mistress?” Poe says.

“K’Oanan is too bloody stupid to rule anything successfully, and he’s not going to magically grow a brain in the next five years.”

It’s clear her advisers may not disagree with that, though they are shocked at her putting it that bluntly. She’s not being _diplomatic._

Jefferies says. “You’re likely right, Mistress, but in five years the situation will have calmed down enough that the warlords will be stable, and they’ll guide him how they like.”

“Yes… I was listening as you’ve said that before. But… What about K’Ahauna? He should be part of this.”

“He’ll likely turn adviser to his brother, and his brother will ignore him, and K’Oanan will be a weak king, ruled by his yet unknown queen who will be put in place by the warlords around him.”

Rey purses her lips. “I don’t like that. K’Aar won’t like that. What if we had both boys rule?”

Her “advisers” just look at her. It’s clear that none of them want to say what they’re all thinking, namely they’ve spent every hour since this deal has been in the offing coming up with a good solution given the constraints of the culture they’re working with, and she’s been on the job for three hours as best they know, and she’s shoving her ass into places it doesn’t belong.

Jon looks perversely satisfied.

She can feel Threepio looking at her, but thinking of Han Solo.

Jon says, “Obviously, that’s a possible response. But… how would you sell it to them? The current K’Aar is someone they’re used to having rule. Extending his power and gently tapering it off will be easily swallowed. Two… kings… even for the boys themselves… They’re unlikely to see it as acceptable.”

Rey thinks about it. Poe’s cheering her, mentally, on. He’s got the sense she’s moving in the right direction here, too.

“We’ll fight. One on one. Me versus each of the boys.”

Her advisers look ready to pass out at that idea. Poe’s _grinning_ like this is the best thing he’s ever heard. Jon’s approving.

“I’ll beat each of them. Easily.” And it’s possible that a certain level of ass-kicking for K’Oanan would improve the outlook of the day for her.

“And this is going to make them want to rule together, how?” Jefferies asks.

“Then I’ll let them fight me two on one, and let them win. We all think K’Ahauna, if he could get some confidence, would be a better leader than K’Oanan.” She gets a quick flash of a future… She doesn’t know if it’s real, or her imagination. It feels real, but her image of her and Kylo building in the sunshine felt real, too, and it hasn’t happened. This flash is K’Oanan, a bloody mess, dead. He’s not going to learn to be a decent ruler because in the next five years he’s going to get himself killed, likely by an extremely irate husband. “I’ve got to topple him one on one so we can get to a place of both of them working together.” Maybe, if they work together, they might rub off on each other some, and… maybe they won’t end up with a future where K’Oanan is dead, and K’Ahauna is out of the picture, and the warlords are fighting among themselves. “But if they can ‘beat me’ as a team, maybe they’ll see the other one as valuable, and we can show them working together as a better alternative than the two of them separately.”

“We’ll keep the part of the current K’Aar as the regent, but,” Jon’s grinning, “I like this. They want us to show off strength and power. The idea that, and you’ll hopefully forgive this Rey, that even our women can beat the shit out of their best warriors, will go a long way to cementing the idea of power here, and then when they work together… You won’t let them win easy, right?”

“Of course not. I’ll… just barely, slip on something or whatever, and let one of them pin me, but it won’t be easy, and I’ll keep them bouncing off each other enough that they’ll feel like they were working together, not one was just carrying the other one.”

“And how will you get K’Ahauna to do anything other than pout in the corner?” Colonel Jefferies asks.

Rey smiles. “I have my ways. It’ll work.”

It’s abundantly clear that, as professionals in their own service, not a single one of them would be willing to give Rey the benefit of the doubt on this. It’s also clear, that as members of the Order, they’re all aware of the fact that Rey knows all of their names and faces, and they are, to say the least, _nervous_ about what Kylo will do to them when he gets up if they do not, at least give lip service, to his lady’s idea.

It does help that Jon likes this, because, well… If it goes completely pear shaped, and beating the shit out of the K’Aran boys is, in fact, not the right plan, they can blame it on him.

After all, if the Grand Marshal, and the Master’s Lady are on board for this plan, who are they to say no?

 

 

* * *

The first step in the plan is getting the K’Aar to back it. Nothing they’ve got on offer is going anywhere without his permission.

He listens, he nods, he listens more, and then he turns to Rey and says, “You know, if you just want to hit him a few times as a response to his comment, you’re more than welcome to. This… Isn’t necessary if it’s just about maintaining honor.”

That wasn’t the response they were hoping for.

Rey rubs her lips together. Then she says, hoping the diplomats won’t pass out when she says this, “It’s not that smacking him upside the head with a staff a few times won’t improve my day. It certainly will.”

The K’Aar smirks at that. Ilnor seems to approve, too. Seems to approve of her, personally, for the first time today.

“It’s that… You want your kingdom to continue onto the next generation. And you said it yourself, you’d hoped they been one child. Well, they aren’t. And it appears the most likely result of this, is that K’Oanan ends up in charge, with us backing the settlement, and you steering for the first several years, and all of us hoping that he can grow up enough to not ruin your kingdom.”

She takes a breath, and then makes herself say it, “And I think we know how that works out in the long run. He does something stupid. _Painfully_ stupid. The kind of stupid you don’t come back from.”

“Like attempting to poach a stronger man’s wife out of his own home,” Ilnor says.

“Sure. The sort of thing, where honor demands that whomever he insults kills him, and we,” she gestures, meaning the Order, “won’t be within our rights to respond.”

“Unless, of course, that’s part of a contract you want,” Jon adds. “Right now, we’re assuming that, should either boy go afoul of civic or cultural mores, and someone seeks to do something about it, making sure they don’t isn’t part of our job.”

The K’Aar nods. “It’s about preventing a civil war. Not keeping one of my warlords from cutting the head off the man who cuckolds him.” He’s rubbing his forehead, looking like he’s having way too easy a time believing that would be a problem. Especially if K’Oanan were to add K’Aar to his title.

“Meanwhile, K’Ahauna is lost. Perhaps he joins us. We might, even, given the time, turn him into a decent leader. Tentative, but nothing a few good generals couldn’t smooth out. But he’ll need time. But, he won’t have it. By the time K’Oanan outlives his usefulness, he’ll have a son, and that son will end up with a ‘regent’, and… We’re back to whichever of the Uncles ruling things, along with an as of yet unknown queen,” Jon says. “That won’t be the end of your world, but it’s likely not the _best_ alternative we can give you.”

“We’re hoping, that if we can get them to see the value of each other, and that if we set them as co-regents, with you steering for the time being, they might begin to work together, and… with any luck, they’ll rub off on each other. K’Ahauna grows more bold. K’Oanan less so,” Rey replies.

“And at the very least, anyone who seeks to topple the one or the other will have the Order to deal with should they try. It will give both of your boys the chance to learn to rule, and grow up some, with a bit of breathing room,” Threepio finishes.

The K’Aar takes a deep breath, and thinks, and then nods. Then he says, “And you think it’s important that they face _you,_ my lady?”

“I think it is. K’Oanan has it coming. It’s time he learn some humility. And it wouldn’t hurt K’Ahauna to learn a little confidence. Make some right decisions. And, honestly, when they fight together, it’s likely going to take a bit of help for them to do a good job of it, and…” She glances around. “There are myriad brilliant fighters on this ship, but none who I trust to structure a fight so they’ll be able to work with each other.”

K’Aar nods again. “All right then. And, may I sit in on the fight?”

“Certainly,” Rey says.

Ilnor says, “And, can we get a recording of it. Co-regents is not part of our traditions, so… something to help prove the idea that this is wise would help.”

“I’m certain we can arrange that, too,” Jon replies.

 

 

* * *

It’s a warm rush of liquid pleasure. K’Oanan is _overjoyed_ at this plan. He’s sure he’ll beat their champion in a few hits, and then gain his crown, and crow his way back to the adoring throngs of the K’Aran dynasty.

When he realizes that champion is going to be Rey, he’s _beyond_ overjoyed. He’s not just fantasizing about his future as the K’Aar, he’s also inundated by a _lot_ of deeply (at least to him) erotic images of the two of them fighting, and…

Rey sighs loudly as he’s blasting everyone nearby (or just her. She’s the only Force sensitive around, though she’s genuinely concerned if this is ‘loud’ enough for Kylo to pick it up. She lets her mind wander to his, but apparently he’s sleeping, and… That’s probably a good thing right now. She wants to tame this kid, not get him murdered.) with the image of the two of them, him ‘victorious’ on top of her, pumping away. 

K’Ahauna is nervous. That’s pouring off of him. He’s afraid he’s going to mess this up. Afraid he’ll hit Rey too hard, and damage her. Afraid that by pulling his punches, he’ll fail at this. He’s afraid the Master, wherever the hell it is he might be, may see this, and then show up and personally rip his head right off of his neck for doing this.

“We’ll meet in the Master’s training gym in an hour then?” Rey says.

K’Oanan is grinning. “We could just go straight to your chambers, my lady.”

His grandfather hits him upside the back of the head, hard.

He barely notices.

K’Ahauna swallows hard, and then nods.

 

 

* * *

K’Oanan is grinning at her. He _loves_ this idea. He’s going first. Several reasons for that, not the least of which is that Rey’s fairly sure she _can’t_ get K’Ahauna to take a swing at her if he genuinely thinks he might hurt her.

Beating some manners into his brother first should help dissuade him of that idea.

“They tell me you’ve got a husband, love.” He’s looking her over, and even if their culture isn’t a huge proponent of thin, muscular women, he seems to be enjoying the view. “He’s obviously not up to the job of taking care of you properly.” He looks her up and down. She’s standing a few meters off, getting a feel for the training staves. Yes, using her own would be… satisfying, but permanently maiming the boy isn’t her plan. “If he were meeting your needs properly, even the idea of this would never occur to you.”

She can feel it. His fantasy has morphed. Not only is he going to win his kingship, but he’s going to steal her right off this ship. Cuckold the great Master Ren. She’s not sure, exactly, what laying horns on a man means, symbolically, she can feel _exactly_ what it means in physical terms, but… Apparently, in their culture it’s a massive dishonor to the man cuckolded, and a _huge_ victory for the man who manages to do it.

He doesn’t pick out a staff. “Come Lady, no need for that. We can dance skin to skin.”

She throws a staff at him, and he catches it before it smacks him in the head. He twirls it around a few times, and then peels off his shirt, showing off. He knows he’s pretty, and he wants her to look.

Rey supposes he might be pretty. But he’s not hers.

“Well, I suppose I can humor this. Wouldn’t want our play to end too quickly.” He makes a little kissing gesture at her, and touches the tip of his tongue to his lip.

 

 

As she’s rolling her eyes at that, he charges.

Two moves, one half step, the dull thwap of staff hitting skin, and he’s on the floor on his back. Rey whacks him in the ribs again just to do that.

“If that’s your idea of not finishing too quickly, I’d hate to see what you think fast is.”

K’Oanan leaps back up. “Lady, if needs be, I’ll go all night to satisfy you.”

He’s so blisteringly stupid it’s difficult to fight him.

It’s not the Rey’s done a lot of fighting. Whacking idiots with her staff on Jakku. And, once she was fully grown, she had enough strength to put some real power into her staff, and… It’s not difficult to make a drunk stay down, especially if you don’t court trouble by going where there are groups of them.

Then she fought Kylo, and that was an extremely different experience.

Kylo who has not only an immense natural talent at this, but twenty years of training, was a _fight._ A took-everything-she-had, and would have taken more, if the planet hadn’t split, _fight._

And then just to up that a bit, she went against the Praetorian Guard with him at her back. None of them, one on one were as good as Kylo, but they also didn’t have to be. When you’re outnumbered four to one, any given one of the four does not have to be better than you.

If she hadn’t been high from not being dead, exalted from Kylo picking her, sure they could do no wrong in that moment, four on one would have likely brought back some bad memories, but… She was so far from Jakku in that moment, it could have happened to someone else.

But here, now, she’s got an over eager boy, rushing straight at her, desperate to knock her down and rub all over her.

He’s sure he can do it, too. He’s half a head taller than she is, probably has twelve kilos on her. He’s young and strong, showing off tight muscles, wearing just his trousers. He’d likely take them off if he had anything on under them.

He’s focused on the curves he can now see, better, because she’s in light trousers and a tank top, hair pulled back, staff in hands.

On this charge, she again, using the exact same technique she did before, trips him and takes him down, and just to do it, she whacks him in the ribs again, and debates getting him in the stones next time, because maybe if they were out of the equation his brain might do some thinking.

He hops back up again, and again tries the exact same attack.

Rey rolls her eyes at that, and stands ready, letting him come to her again. And again, half a step, a minor twist, three whacks, all of them a tad harder than strictly necessary, and on the floor K’Oanan is.

He’s looking up at her, lust and adoration in his eyes. She hits him in the thigh just to do it. He moans at the contact and Rey winces, realizing he’s _liking_ this, too.

He’s back up again, and again she’s not, intentionally, looking, but… Now, it’s difficult to miss. There is a definite tent in his trousers, and he’s subtly squirming, pressing the shaft of the staff against himself. “Please, Lady, another?”

The fact that his grandfather is about to disembowel himself in shame at this is not helping her composure, and apparently Jon’s under the impression that Kylo is going to personally kill him for allowing this is also not improving things. Poe and K’Ahuana are having a good time, so that helps, some.

Focus.

She wiggles a finger at K’Oanan, letting him know to advance, and this time he’s a hair more wary, not just charging in. Apparently, he is, with enough time, teachable. This time, he wiggles his fingers back at her, waiting for her to come to him. Well… She can’t imagine he’s any better on defense than he was on offense, so…

This time she’s on him, fast and elegant, it takes a few more hits, a jerking pull of her staff behind his knees, the butt of her staff to his sternum, and one final whack to his shoulder, and then he’s _down._

He’d gasp, but the air is knocked out of him. He’d move, but he’s too stunned for that, right now. He lays there, on his back, bruises all over his torso and face rapidly purpling.

Rey stares down at him and raises one eyebrow.

He gasps, hard, finally getting air back into his lungs.

Rey nods. “K’Oanan, you may be excused. I think I’ve learned all I need to from you.”

“Are you sure? We could do another round?” His voice is rough, breathy, and painfully aroused.

Rey smacks him with her staff one more time, hard, in the ribs.

“Yes, Mistress.” He scrambles to his feet and slinks off. A med droid immediately hovers over to him, and begins slathering him in bacta patches. She nods to his grandfather, who herds them to the far side of the gym, letting her have a moment with her men.

A moment later Jon and Poe are right next to her.

Jon’s blushing, hard. “Gods, Rey, I’m so sorry. When I said this sounded like a good idea… I didn’t think he’d… do _that._ ”

Poe’s about to sprain his lungs he’s laughing so hard at the whole thing. When he can breathe again, he says, “He’s gonna be spanking it to the image of you standing over him like that for the next year.”

Rye slumps and rolls her eyes. “Tell me that’s not a _common_ response to a fight?”

Jon and Poe meet each other’s eyes. Jon rubs his lips together, and Poe smirks. Finally, Jon says, “Back when I went through training about one in ten of them couldn’t keep it down during martial combat exercises.”

Poe’s chuckling. “A bit less in the Army of the Republic, but… Yeah… Especially the week when we switched trainers. We’d been working with Master Dun, and he was about fifty, knew every mean trick in the book, weighed as much as a junker, and looked just as pretty. Then we got into Mistress Jayne’s class, and she was… Shit… I mean… I didn’t pop a stand trying to grapple her, but I was probably the only one in the class who didn’t. But after the first week, most of the recruits got used to her, but a few of them just _couldn’t,_ and she was _brutal_ on them, which just seemed to spur them on even harder, and… Class got a lot easier when we moved onto Master Wheln.”

“Wonderful.” She’s not sure if she’d have suggested this if she had realized that fighting K’Oanan would get him hard. “And how do you think his brother is going to do?”

“He’s either going to lay down and beg you to hit him, or maybe, if we’re lucky, he’ll be decent on defense and fairly tame on offense, and you’ll knock his ass down, and he’ll just lie there,” Poe says.

“Do you want to keep doing this, Rey?” Jon asks.

“Yeah, let’s get this done. I’ll fight K’Ahauna, then fight them together, and see if I can convince them that they’re much better as co-regents with Grandpa advising for them. Hopefully we set that peace in motion, and it’ll hold for at least five years.”

“Hopefully.”

 

 

* * *

K’Ahauna surprises her. Apparently, with his brother having set the bar so low, he began to relax.

Tame on offense is an understatement. He _will not_ attack her. At all. They just stood there for a solid three minutes, while Rey waited just to see what he’d do, and the correct answer was stand there and gaze at her, loosely holding his staff.

 

 

But, once she made her move, he did a good job.

Once she made her move, it took her a solid minute to get him down. Part of that was re-setting her own expectations. K’Oanan had no defense, so she only had to go for his knees, and down he went. Meanwhile, K’Ahauna is comfortable on defense, and with a staff, so he’s almost happily playing along.

He’s not saying anything. He feels no need to taunt her, and if he’s enjoying this on a sexual level, his body isn’t showing it off.

(And since he’s not projecting how he’s feeling about this, Rey decides to just let him have his privacy. She doesn’t need to be deep in his mind to fight him.)

On the second round, he actually is enjoying this. He’s not a warrior by any stretch of the imagination, but getting to spar with what he's starting to think of as ‘a pretty girl’ _and_ show his brother up, is improving his day immensely.

On the third round, he does, tentatively, begin an attack. He’s circling her, staying out of her range. He’s got at least ten centimeters of reach on her, so as long as he doesn’t get too close, he can hit her, and she can’t hit him.

Rey’s twirling her staff, a long slow spin. Keeping it moving so she can get it into any position she needs quickly, but waiting to see what he’s going to do.

She feels it the second he decides to try it, knows it’s coming, and prepares to block it.

He tosses his staff at her head, and if it had gone according to his plan, she would have gotten her staff up to block, while moving her head back to protect it, and then he would have swept low, grabbing her foot, and yanking her off balance.

Instead she held her staff in front of her, and jumped up, crashing her staff into his, and he, sweeping low for her foot, fell on his face because the foot he was going to grab was almost a meter higher than he’d planned for.

He hits the ground, rolls, and Rey lands lightly beside him. She looks down at him, and nods. “That was a good one.”

He smiles up at her. “One more?”

“Nah. I think I know what I need to.”

She can feel he’s pleased with that.

 

 

* * *

After watching that, K’Oanan is in a _bad_ mood. Not only did he not get his rocks off. Not only did he not manage to get Rey on the floor, but apparently his timid little brother got her to smile at him.

That image of getting her on the floor is intensifying, and it’s not getting any prettier. It’s not a victory fuck now. Now, it’s revenge. Now, in his mental image, she’s crying under him.

Rey rolls her lips, and is wondering if her plan of the two of them together can work.

Or if it should.

“Gentlemen, do you mind if I take a moment with my advisers?” She means Poe and Jon, both of whom have been watching this.

The K’Aar nods. She’s got the sense that he also has an idea of what’s going through K’Oanan’s mind.

“Need to rest up for our big finale? Never much liked an audience, love, but for a chance at you, I’ll do it in front of the whole galaxy.”

Rey pulls Jon and Poe aside. She’s generally entirely willing to trust her own danger sense, but… She also knows that this is a threat she’s more sensitive to than normal, and she wants other opinions. She keeps her voice low. “He’s setting off my danger sense.”

Poe’s nodding. “Yeah, I wouldn’t turn my back on him. I don’t think he can get one over on you, but… There’s some nasty in there, hiding under the stupid.”

Jon’s senses aren’t nearly as keen, but he knows a snake when he sees one. “We can call the K’Aar over and scrap this plan right now. I think we’ve proven that with time and some breathing space K’Ahauna will manage.”

Rey bites her lip. “I think he needs a win, at least one. His confidence is growing, but it’s fragile.”

“Look, fight him, don’t fight him, I’m thinking we likely shouldn’t suggest the two of them rule together,” Jon’s saying watching both of them. “Can you set this up to show that fighting together K’Ahauna’s the more valuable of the two?”

Rey thinks about that. She nods slowly. “Yeah, probably. Two more fights. I won't put them together. That's... not going to work. Set both of them on defense. After all, the job of the K’Aar is to protect his people, yes?”

“Something like that.”

 

 

* * *

Rey heads back to the middle of the room. She turns to K’Oanan. “Five minutes. Your job is to make sure I don’t hit your brother. If, at the end of five minutes, he doesn’t have any new bruises, you’ve succeeded.”

“Can I get a kiss if I succeed?”

Rey’s never been so tempted to Force choke someone in her life. She smiles at him, cold and dark. “Sure. All the kisses you want. Wherever you’d like them.”

His blood pressure spikes, his lust flares, and anything even remotely approaching his common sense or tactical skills just rolls over and dies.

She feels more than hears K’Ahauna say to his grandfather. “I’m going to need a lot of bacta when this is done.”

Rey shoots him a quick glance, not exactly commiserating, but he seems to understand. She’s setting this to play to his strengths, and he appreciates it.

And that’s probably worth a black eye or two.

 

* * *

She will give K’Oanan this, he’s fast.

And he’s also not impossibly stupid. Having explicitly spelled it out that it’s his job to defend, he’s not, immediately, charging at her.

But the only defense he knows is good offense, so as soon as Rey starts to close on his brother, he’s leaping between them and trying to run her over with his larger size and what he presumes is greater strength.

He’s not as strong, or as fast, as he thinks he is, though. And his theory that he can just physically take whatever hit she lays down, because he’s assuming that if it’s his body that gets hit, and not his brother’s he’ll win…

Yeah… Well… That’s not exactly working out for him.

He’s taken three hits, hard ones, when Rey moves back a bit to go for another attack. She says to him, “Is this how you’d defend your home, your people? Just get in the way and take the beating?”

He dodges to the side, and takes a hit to the shoulder. “If I need to.”

Rey backs up further. She holds her staff to the side, looking like she’s pausing the fight, but the chrono is still running, and she knows how he’s going to respond to that opening.

He plays right into it, charging her, fast and hard, barreling towards her, jumping, staff raised, ready to bring it down on her skull, not caring about possibly hurting her, now.

She dodges back, low, turns with his swing, whipping around the path of his weapon, shifting her staff just to her left hand, turning further, twisting, catching his right wrist with the full force of her swing, and _everyone_ hears the crack of his wrist as she shatters it between her staff and his.

He drops like a sack of wet cement, clutching at the now useless limb, to shocked, too hurt, to make a sound, yet. She kneels next to him. “And what do you do when you can’t take another hit?”

Rey, calmly, walks over to K’Ahauna and gently bops him on the top of the head with her staff. “Once the med droid is done with him, same challenge, defend your brother for five minutes.”

He’s looking fast between his brother crying on the floor, and Rey standing calmly in front of him.

She nods to his brother, and then quietly says to him, “Do better.”

 

 

* * *

Apparently, Jon wasn’t kidding about morph making you just not care.

K’Oanan went from a screaming, vibrating ball of pain and hate to a fairly mellow human humming contentedly on the floor, wrist in a very complicated mesh of plexi-plast in a bacta tube, looking forward to seeing his brother get spattered even faster than he did.

Between hums, he’s babbling about all the different ways he’s going to fuck Rey, for about a minute, then the K’Aar asks to speak to the med droid, and a moment later, he’s unconscious on the floor, which everyone else appreciates.

A moment later, the K’Aar says to Rey, “Lady… I think the correct answer is abundantly clear at this point, we don’t have to—“

She offers him a bit of a smile, and nods to K’Ahauna’s who’s going through the staves, seeing which one of them feels best in his hand. “Let’s let him win one. At the very least we can send him out of here feeling like he deserves this.”

“You have more wisdom than your years would suggest.”

“Thank you?”

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“Good.” She looks at the now “sleeping” grandson. “Do you think this will be good for him?”

“I hope it helps him to learn some humility.” He looks at her, eyes soft. “I know he’s… getting off to a bad start with you, and you are seeing his worst, but… Being an idiot or…” and she knows he’s thinking of some of the things he’s heard about Kylo Ren over the years, “Evil even, at twenty-two isn’t a reliable indicator of who you’ll be at thirty.”

Rey glances to him. She, obviously, didn’t know Kylo at twenty-two, but she’s fairly sure he wouldn’t have felt like… this. “We can hope. In the meantime…”

“In the meantime, I assume that The Order will suggest K’Ahuana for K’Aar.”

“And we’ll enforce it. We’ll have the details and suggestions worked out before supper, and you can read and change them at your leisure.”

“Excellent.” He looks to his grandson. “And he appears to have picked his staff.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

This is fun.

She guesses that if she couldn’t feel what K’Ahuana was going to do before he did it, they’d be fairly evenly matched. He is bigger, and were it just muscle for muscle he’d be stronger and faster, but he’s not, so…

It’s _fun._

He’s feeling a bit loose and comfortable, like the pressure is off. He’s sure he _can’t_ fuck it up worse than his brother did, so he’s playing, a little. He won’t let his guard down, too much. She’s pressing him, a little. Going just a touch faster than he’d be comfortable with, making him sweat, but not letting him fail or embarrass himself too badly.

The crack of her staff on his is thrilling and satisfying, and the freedom to really _move,_ to push herself… She hasn’t done this sort of fight in a while, and… When Kylo’s up and feeling better again, they need to start sparring.

She’s looking forward to that, a lot.

The image of him in just a pair of trousers with a staff… Hair back, those eyes on hers… Twirling a staff the way he did with his lightsaber in the forest… That gets her heart pumping faster. And distracts her enough that K’Ahuana manages to land a hit on her. His staff cracks across her face.

He immediately drops his staff and begins to apologize profusely, but Rey waves it off. “We’re fighting, you’re allowed to hit me if you can.”

“But… Lady… Your cheek.”

She can feel it swelling. “I don’t bruise easily. A little bacta and it’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods. Between some bacta and her Force, her face should be healed by supper. “I’m sure.” She glances at the chrono. “Congratulations, you’ve defended your brother for five minutes.

“I think we know all we need to know. My advisers and I will chat a bit more, and then we’ll send a copy of our plan to your grandfather.”

K’Ahuana looks almost like he might be nervous about that, and then he relaxes.

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“I think you will. I understand we’ll be having supper together, after.”

“I understand that, too, and will anticipate it, eagerly.” He again, gently, cautiously, takes her hand, and kisses the back of it. “Until then.”

Rey nods at him.

 

 

* * *

Dinner goes well.

K’Oanan does not attend.

Rey’s not sure if he’s sulking in his room about the outcome of the day, or if the K’Aar decided that he’d embarrassed them enough for one night, and putting him into a situation where he might mix pain killers with alcohol and Rey was asking for a disaster.

However it worked out, he’s not sitting at the table with them.

Rey does not mind that in the least.

She doesn’t mind dinner, either. Not really. This is… she supposes well-trod territory might be the best way to describe it. Here, now, she’s a pretty lady holding court on her own in a social setting.

The K’Arans know how to handle that, and without feeling like the floor under their feet is unsteady, they’re being smooth, charming, and filling the night with good stories.

Poe and Jon are good at that, too. Adding their own… charming tales… that’s probably the best term for them. Light, entertaining stories with good punchlines that everyone at the table can, on some level, commiserate with.

Rey enjoys the stories. She doesn’t feel like she has any of her own. After all, who wants to hear about scavenging junk for a few mouthfuls of water? Or scrubbing grit off of gears in an effort to make something worth a few more calories.

She’s probably looking wistful, glancing toward where Kylo is, wanting to be with him, as they’re wrapping up dessert. Jon gives her hand a bit of a squeeze. “Tired, Lady Ren?”

She nods a bit. “It’s been a long few days. When I’m not doing this, I’m the primary healer for the Maji, and in addition to Kylo, almost everyone is sick.”

The K’Aar leaps up. “Come. We will not linger.” Apparently, healing and taking care of other members of the clan are appropriate feminine things to do among the K’Aran, and she can feel he’s determined to keep her away from that not a second longer than necessary.

“Thank you.” She also stands, and gently grasps hands with each of them.

This time, the K’Aar does kiss her hand, and he says, “When that man of yours is feeling up to it, bring him to us. We’ll make sure to show you a good time.”

“I’m certain we will take you up on that. I know he had been looking forward to meeting you.”

Jon’s radiating a satisfied pleasure. “Perhaps, when we open the first of our recruiting stations, the Rens may show up to provide the proper fanfare, and celebrate the union of our empire and yours?”

“I think that would be a profitable endeavor for all of us,” Ilnor says.

“Excellent,” Rey says, glancing at the door again.

“Come,” The K’Aar is beginning to pull his people away, when K’Ahauna says to Rey, “Mistress, may I have a moment with you?”

Rey glances to the rest of the party, making sure that saying yes isn’t some sort of massive breach of etiquette. Jon gives her a little nod.

“Certainly.”

He waits for the rest of them to get to the far end of the throne room, at the elevator door, before going back to his chair, and pulling the small box he’d placed under it out.

She watches as he removes… something. Rey’s never seen anything like it. Her Force sense lets her know it’s alive, otherwise she’d have assumed it was some sort of… spun glass artwork. It’s a soft, almost shimmering coral and gold, translucent, and she has to assume it’s some sort of flower, but she’s never seen anything like it before.

He’s cradling it, gently, like it’s more delicate than the spun glass she knows it cannot be, and then turns to her, stepping close, to Rey.

K’Ahauna is holding it out to her. He’s not looking her in the face, but she can feel he wants to.

 

 

She can feel he’s afraid, but… willing to bet on… luck and maybe feeling a bit foolhardy, and a bit reckless because today has gone, so far, better than he could have expected.

She sighs. _This_ is not what she wanted him to use his newfound confidence on.

She prays that he’ll have the good sense to _not_ say what he’s about to say.

“I’m… sorry my brother was such a jackass.” He does look up at her, his own wide green eyes eager, hopeful. Because he doesn’t have his brother’s attitude, Rey can see that he is attractive, and young, close to her own age. It’s the first time that she’s thought of the fact that twenty-two, and the twenty-fivish she thinks herself to be, are not that far apart.

She smiles a bit at him before she can stop it.

He’s… pleasant. And, maybe somewhere, somewhen, in a different life, she could have taken what she knows he’s about to do next, seriously.

But she doesn’t live that life and neither does he.

“But he’s not wrong about you.” He holds eye contact, not ogling her, not allowing his thoughts to stray into “disrespectful” (other than, of course the astoundingly massive breach of etiquette he’s about to commit by attempting to poach a married woman out of her husband’s home.) territory.

He hands her the flowers, not touching her skin, but his fingers linger near hers. She can feel the heat of them, and the tremble at the idea that maybe, if he’s lucky, she would consent to touch him, or… maybe… He knows it won’t happen, but he’s got to try… Maybe, she’ll leave with him.

“It’s a Rhindra Orchid. I… asked mother to send me some as soon as I saw you. They’re… rare. They only grown on one island on Arenthal. They absorb nutrients from the air, so they can go anywhere, and look to live on nothing, though, it’s said, in a home where the hearts are happy they thrive.” He swallows, looking her in the eyes, pleading. “They are a gift, given from a man to a woman, to show his intentions are serious, and honorable.” His index finger lightly, so lightly, shaking from nerves and sexual excitement, brushes the back of her hand. “My brother would take you to bed for a night, think only of himself, and forget you as soon as he was done boasting of it. I would adore you with my body and mind and make you a queen.”

He means it. Rey can feel that all through herself, and he’s so… earnest.

She closes her eyes, tilting her head down. She hands him the orchids back, and gently squeezes his hands.

It’s out of her mouth before she’s even thought of it. “I already am one.” She looks up at him. “And I am adored, and beloved, and…” He’s looking at her, skeptically. His queen, his vision of her, is plump and soft and pregnant and ‘well-tended.’ “My needs are being met. You are being very sweet, and I… appreciate… the sentiment, but I am not for you.”

He looks so sad. “You could be. Wise and powerful… but there’s gentleness there, too. I can feel it. Everything you are or could want to be, I can cherish. You…” He rolls his lips. “It’s clear you don’t enjoy this. Parties and dithering with strangers. I could see the way your mind wandered, the longing to be elsewhere. You do it, but you don’t love it. If… I’d never make you… You could be a homebody if you wanted. You wouldn’t have to be a warrior. I wouldn’t… make you stand before predators like my brother and fight them off. You and I…”

Rey’s shaking her head. “No. I am where I want to be. Doing what I need to do.”

K’Ahauna steps back from her. He looks at the flower, and then nods, and then offers them back to her. “You love your man very much.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then take it, and let it thrive in your home.”

Rey takes the shimmering coral/gold flower, and says, “Thank you.”

K’Ahauna nods, and then turns, and leaves.

Rey stands there, watching him walking out, watching the elevator doors close behind him.

Then she sighs, lets her shoulders slump, and stands there, eyes closed, for a moment.

Soft clicking of metal feet on a metal floor. “Mistress Ren?”

“C8?”

“I’m shutting the elevator down, and setting up a no disruptions command that will not lift until you request it.”

“Thanks, C8.” She tugs at her hair, pulling pins out of it, letting it start to fall around her shoulders. “I think… I’m going to sleep in, and…” Probably not. She’s still got to get home and see what’s going on on Lirium.

“Just let me know when you want some breakfast, and I’ll have it ready.”

“Second shift. Uh…” She tries to think what she’s going to want. “Just, a cup of coffee, lots of milk. At least half milk. Two chicken eggs, and the chopped up and fried potatoes with bits of ham and onion in them.”

“I’ll arrange it, Mistress. Do you think Master Ren will want food?”

“I doubt it. Maybe he’ll be able to take some tea by mouth.” She looks at the flowers in her hand. “What do I do with this?”

“It’s customary to find an attractive container for it to live in.”

“Oh. Uh…”

“I’ll get you one.”

“Not black.”

“I will get you a not-black vase.”

“Thanks.” She’s tired and just staring around. Then she shakes her hair out, and begins walking toward Kylo’s office. “You think he’ll mind?” she asks as she looks into the not at all black room.

“I can’t imagine he will.” C8 follows her into the office. Rey lays her hand on the door to Kylo’s room. She sighs a bit, thinking of Jon arguing about going in there. She doesn’t actually know how to open the the lock, either. She doesn’t need to. “Mistress?”

“C8?”

“I’m certain that when he hears about this, he will be proud of how you’ve done.”

She nods.

“Do you know that my primary programing, my original function, is tactical planning in regards to personnel?”

“No. Uh…”

“I’m designed to be a personal assistant to a battle commander. I have the full rota of everyone on staff at the Order, their strengths and weaknesses, and part of what I’m supposed to do is help to advise Master Ren on who to put where, when, and why.”

“Oh.”

“From everything I’ve seen, you made the correct decision about which of the boys to back.”

“Not difficult once I got a good feel for him.”

“It never is, but getting a good feel, and getting people to show who they truly are, is.”

She nods. “Thanks C8.”

“You’re welcome, have pleasant rest.”

“I hope to.” And with that Rey ports herself back to the other side of the door.

 

 

* * *

Kylo’s actually awake when she gets in there. His eyebrows rise for a moment, and then lower. “Am I dreaming?”

She sits on the bed next to him. “Not this time.” Her hands caress his face, and even without the touch, she can still see the fever flush and his glassy eyes. “Feeling a little better?”

He curls around her. “Now.” He nuzzles his cheek against her knee. “Pretty dress.” He kisses it. “Prettier woman under it. Something interesting happen?”

“Yeah.” She strokes his hair. Normally she’d run her fingers through it, but right now it’s vastly too dirty and tangled for that.

“Good interesting?” He’s holding onto her, and she feels his shivers start to rise.

“I’ll tell you about it when you’re feeling better. Right now, I’m going to undress, and then snuggle up with you.”

He curls a little tighter in on himself as she gets up. “I’d like that.” He’s watching her undress, and she can feel how content he is right this second. He’s fever blasted, tired, cold, and sore, but she’s here, and just that’s enough.

She pulls off the over dress.

“You were gone a long time?”

It’s clear he’s still not tracking time well. “Longer than I wanted to be.”

“Everything’s all right?”

“Yeah. Everything is all right. All you’ve got to do is lay around and heal right now, baby.” She lifts the sheet and slips under the blankets, curling around him.

A contented purr rumbles through Kylo. “I missed this.”

She kisses the back of his neck. “Me, too.”

 

 


	19. The Grand Marshall and the Commander (Redux)

 

2/6/2

 

They’re waiting, quietly, at the elevator. K’Ahuana has ‘gone back to get something he forgot.’

The other men are… tolerating this.

Threepio, on the other hand... He knows what’s about to happen. He’s human enough for that. And he knows how this is going to end. Just because he, personally, doesn’t see what Rey likes about Kylo, doesn’t mean he’s unaware of the fact that they’re the most married people he’s ever met. He doesn’t see why the other men don’t do something about this. “Shouldn’t we… stop him?”

The K’Aar shakes his head, and Poe’s agreeing with him. Poe puts a hand on Threepio’s shoulder. “He needs to get shot down on his own on this one. We stop him he’ll always wonder about maybe or what if, and…”

The K’Aar continues, “And in six months, he’ll be back, with his own backers, and be stupid enough to make a formal challenge for her, and Ren will kill him, and… That’s not going to do anyone any good.”

“I doubt Kylo would kill a puppy for—“ Jon starts.

“A formal challenge means he shows up with all of his backers and attempts a raid on your home to get her out of it,” Ilnor supplies.

“Oh.” Jon winces. Yeah. Kylo likely wouldn’t take well to thousands of armed men showing up to attempt to remove Rey by force.

“Families arrange marriages on our world. Formally, the ladies don’t have a choice about it, though in most cases their fathers will take their preferences into account. That doesn’t mean they’re entirely powerless. They can signal that they aren’t happy with the deal if someone they like more shows up. And it’s considered the height of rude to attempt to take a woman from her husband. He’s got every right to kill you and everyone you bring with you if you fail. And she’s got to say, yes. You can’t just carry her off. But… If you can do it, if you survive it, that gets you a lot of status, and if he managed to take Ren’s woman from Ren’s home--” Ilnor continues.

The K’Aar breaks in. “Boldness in the face of true love. They write songs and stories about that. That’s how I got their grandmother, and,” he taps the scar snaking up the back of his hand. “He’s… being twenty-two. But if she gives him a hint she might go for it, he’ll be back.”

They watch. “Is her taking the flower a bad thing?” Poe asks.

“Not from K’Ahuana’s point of view,” The K’Aar replies.

They watch Rey give it back. And even from the far side of the room, even without Force sensitivity, they can all feel Rey tell him in no uncertain terms, no.

He gives her the flower again.

Jon raises an eyebrow… “Uh…”

The K’Aar shakes his head. “Look at the way he’s moping. That was… salvaging some pride I think. He’s not going to try again.”

“Good,” Threepio says. “I’d prefer our deal continue on, not end in blaster bolts and lightsaber burns.”

The K’Aar sighs, and as his grandson joins them, he wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, lad, let’s go.”

K’Ahauna looks wrecked. “I’d…”

“I know. We’ve all been there, one way or another. At least she was kind about it.” He nods to Threepio. “Are you showing us back to our rooms?”

“Yes, K’Aar. And by the time we get there, I have a feeling Colonel Jefferies will have the formal contract written up. If you like, we can go over it together.”

“I would like that.”

“Excellent.” Threepio hits the enter button on the elevator, and it swishes open. The K’Arans head in, and Poe notices that Jon doesn’t, so he hangs back, too. “Grand Marshal? Commander?”

“We’ll wait,” Jon replies. “Unlike you, we’re not going to the I-Deck.”

Threepio nods, and hits the close button.

 

 

* * *

And a moment later, Jon and Poe are alone, in the throne room, waiting.

As soon as he knows the elevator is out of earshot, Jon runs his hands through his hair, slouches, moans quietly, and then looks up at Poe. “Finally.”

Poe grins at him. “You mean, that’s not how you thought that’d go?”

Jon rubs his forehead. “I’d have appreciated things going closer to script, but… We didn’t fail.”

Poe inclines his head. “And even if we had, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.”

 

 

“I guess not.” Jon pops the collar on his vest, and begins taking off his rank hexes. He smiles a little, then he looks to Poe. “Relaxing time?”

“Gods, YES!” He glances at the elevator. “Where the hell are we? Closer to my ship or your room?”

“Your ship, I’d assume. We’re on the AAA-Deck, so…” They hear the sound of the elevator returning. They step in.

“That was really fast,” Poe says.

“That’s because they only went one level up. It’ll be easier for them to go up, and then cut across. We’re going to go straight up to the deck your ship is on, and then cut across.”

“Good.” Poe touches his suit. “Look, this is, without a doubt the best suit I’ve ever worn, but…”

“But it’s not a ‘you-relaxing-having-a-good-time’ look. I get that. Hell, I designed this,” he gestures to his Grand Marshall uniform, “And it’s not my idea of relaxing either. So, we’ll hit your ship, you get comfy, and then back to my place so I can get out of my monkey suit. You dance?”

Poe grins at that, widely. “I’ve been known to, on occasion.”

“Is that part of your idea of relaxing?”

“Sometimes. Is it yours?”

“Depends on how fast the stims wear off. I’m probably good for another three hours, which might mean just get blasted and crash, but I if I’ve got a bit more… There are a few decent clubs on the F-Deck.”

“Excellent,” Poe says as the elevator speeds them upwards.

 

 

* * *

“So, this is home for you?” This time Jon’s really looking at Poe’s ship. It’s a freighter, a high quality, but fairly small one. Compared to the fighters Poe normally flies, it’s huge, but compared to the mega freighters that carry millions of kilotons, this is tiny.

“My one true love.” Poe says as he pats Micah’s hull and keys in the code that opens his hatch. Though the real Micah would have been horrified to see _this_ is the ship Poe named after him. The real Micah likely wouldn’t have deigned to even fly this thing. Too big, too slow, too ugly. 

Fortunately, Jon doesn’t know enough about ship names to ask why his freighter is named Micah. He does know enough to look around at the living space and say, “This is nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Spacious for a ship, right?”

Poe doesn’t point out that they’re on a ship in a ship right now, and that, _no_ this is not spacious for a ship. “Most people with one of these would have at least a crew of four, so… It’s spacious for BB and I.” At the sound of his name, BB rolls over, and sort of looks up at Jon as Poe finishes up with, “Little tighter for a traditional compliment. Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

BB beeps at him for a while, and Poe nods, and nods some more, and then smirks. “Well, I’m glad I missed that.”

Jon asks, “Missed what?”

“Got a call in from Chewie, asking if I’m up for some babysitting, because he’s going stir crazy stuck in the _Falcon_ with Paige.”

“Paige is the baby, right?”

“Yeah. And I’ll go rescue him tomorrow.”

“You do kids?”

“For a while. I’m a fairly good Uncle/older-brother-type, but I’ve never wanted to be Dad. Teaching and hanging out with them is enough. After a few days of all kids all the time, I get kind of itchy and need to head off for a bit.”

Jon nods at that. “I’m the youngest of five. I’ve got nieces and nephews all over the place. And for a day or two, it’s fun…”

“Yeah, for a day or two, and I like coming back to them just fine. It’s really nice that every time I land on Lirium there’s this collection of people who are really excited to see me and want to know what I’ve been up to, but I need grown-up time, too.”

“Exactly.”

Poe gestures to his galley. “Have a seat, relax,” gestures to the drink cabinet. “Grab a drink if you want one. I’ll be out in a bit.”

Then he vanishes into his cabin.

The first thing Poe did with this ship, after landing it on Lirium, was refurb the living space. Since he’s mostly moving around people and things for the settlement, he didn’t need quite as much storage space as the average freighter. He added three small cabins and an extra refresher, so he could move kids around easier. Then he and Rey spent a few days ripping out the Captain’s and Crew’s cabins. Finn, Rose, and Chewie showed up just as they were wrapping that up. Then all five of them worked on getting a new bigger, more comfortable cabin, set up for him.

So, he’s got some very non-standard adaptations for his cabin, like a bed big enough for him to stretch out on. An actual bed. Not a bunk tucked into a shelf on the wall. A massage chair for all of those hard to reach places he just can’t get to himself. A small workout corner so he doesn’t end up like most captains, getting rounder and rounder with each trip.  

He strips out of the suit Jon put him in, and lays it neatly on his bed, before going to his closet (also bigger and better appointed than standard for a ship) and getting out hangers for it, and some of his normal clothing.

He glances at _normal._

Might be going dancing. Might be _relaxing._ Might be…

He sighs. He thinks he’s reading Jon right, and he’s fairly sure _relaxing_ involves sweet, supple friction, moaning, lots of slick, and squishing sounds, all of which Poe would rather enjoy doing with Jon. Except… He can remember last night’s reservations about that.

He’s staring at the sort of thing he’ll often wear to go clubbing. His fuck-me-hard-and-deep outfit. He’s reaching for it.

Jon’s wedding band is in his mind’s eye.

_Fuck._

He rubs his forehead. _Take it easy._

Besides, if Jon’s right about how long he’s got until the stim wears off, he really doesn’t have the time to get into this. Not… not the way he wants to.

He pulls out his usual out and about clothing. Button down, trousers, jacket. He puts the jacket back, it’s warm enough he doesn’t need it.  

Slow and easy. Have a few drinks, maybe if Jon’s feeling up to it, a little dancing, and then tuck him into bed with a kiss on the cheek.

Poe’s shaft is _yelling_ at him, cursing him because it’s fairly sure this is the worst plan he’s ever had. There is a perfectly fine man out there who would likely jump on him if given the chance, and… _Stop it. You’ll get yours soon enough._

 

 

* * *

“Okay. I know we’re on the F-Deck. I see restaurants, food carts… uh,” Jon follows Poe’s gaze, seeing what he’s curious about. It’s twenty minutes later, and most of that’s been spent in an elevator going up, but now they're out in the thick of it, and Poe's looking around.

“Squammath courts. It’s a game, sort of like… You ever play hoop ball?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, hoop ball with goals instead of nets. You kick or throw the ball around, instead of bouncing it.”

“Okay… I see shops and that’s a cinema, but… I’m not seeing any clubs or bars or places I’d go dancing.”

Jon doesn't exactly roll his eyes, and he doesn't exactly grin, but it wouldn't be a leap to suggest either of those things had happened. “We’re in a more ‘family friendly’ section of the F-Deck. The place where Colonel So-and-so can take his wife and kiddos and not have to explain what that nice gentleman wearing the bright orange shorts, and nothing but bright orange shorts, is selling.”

“So, there’s an _adult_ section,” Poe says with a grin.

“Yeah. Once I get changed, we can head there.” Jon steers them through the market toward one of the hallways branching off. “Hold up,” he yells to the tram that’s just about to pull away, and, fortunately, the driver does. “We’re a bit past the central hub, but my rooms are on the far leeward side, so I was figuring you didn’t want to walk all twenty klicks.”

“You’re right about that.”

 

 

* * *

They’re quiet on the ride. Poe doesn’t know how much of that is the fact that this is a First Order… or was a First Order ship, and you’re better off not talking about your business where anyone can hear you, or if Jon’s just tired.

Judging by the way he’s resting back against the seat, probably tired.

Well, that’s okay. Poe doesn’t mind some time in his own head, watching the F-Deck pass them by. They’re in a residential hallway, passing by flat after flat after flat. It reminds him a lot of the years he was on Coruscant with Leia. Buildings that spanned kilometers, on and on and on. No natural light, no sign of the sky.

You could live your whole life on Coruscant without ever seeing the sky. Without ever feeling fresh air on your face.

He always found that a bit claustrophobic.

BB finds that amusing. The cockpit of his fighter was usually three meters square, if that. Obviously, being in a small enclosure isn’t the issue. No visible sky is.

There’s no sky here, and the hallways go on and on and on.

“Do you miss the sky?” he asks Jon.

Jon blinks, and shakes his head a bit, like he’s waking up. “Uh… No. I… Well, you saw. My room is far enough aft that I have a window.”

“Right.”

“Do you… I mean…” He looks at the hallway. “Is that why you live in your ship? Always a view of the sky?”

“No, but it doesn’t hurt. I’m on the move a lot. I could have a place on Lirium, but it’s easier to just keep everything all together with _Micah_.”

Jon thinks about that. “I can see that. If I never knew where the next day would take me, it’d likely be nice to have all my stuff go with me.”

“Yeah, it is.”

They’re both quiet for a while, and then Jon says, “So… How do you decide where to go next?”

Poe cocks his head a bit. “Well, for a long time, someone gave me mission objectives, and then I planned everything out to make sure those objectives were met. I’m good enough at that, and then taking care of everything, that I got a lot of on-my-own style missions.”

“And let me guess, then there were so few of you that they couldn’t afford to give you a partner or team?”

Poe nods. “Yeah. So, I’d have something like, ‘Well, it’s your bloody fault we’re down to seven ships. Go get us a functional Navy. With pilots.’”

“And you just… get them? I mean, you’re pretty, but… no one’s that sweet of a sweet talker.”

Poe barks a short laugh. “Trust me, I _know._ I’m good at cards, too. So play a lot of sabbac or poker. Win money, win ships. Meet people. Find people who didn’t love the First Order, sweet talk them into offering to help. Turning help into ships. It’s slow. But we were building up when Ren took over and stopped doing the shit that makes recruiting easy.”

It’s clear Jon’s not sure what he means.

“Alderaan was the best thing that ever happened to the Rebellion in terms of recruiting. And, if we’d had… anything to work off of, the Hosnian System would have flipped all the support our way, except—“

“Except unlike the Rebellion there weren’t enough of you left ten days later to take advantage.”

“Exactly. And then Snoke’s gone. Hux is dead. Ren’s freeing slaves, and… And Hux took out something like 80% of the Army of the New Republic, so it’s not like I can really go through their guys, find people who want to join up. The ones who were left generally stayed local, keeping watch on their own homes so…”

“You become rebels without a cause.”

“Pretty much. That’s when Leia gave up.”

“And without her, you weren’t going to keep going?”

He shrugs a bit. “I’d already talked to Rey. I was looking for kids then. Seems I’ve got a talent for finding Force sensitives who need a good home. But… Captain goes down with the ship, so I was going to see it to the end. I was there the day the Resistance began, I couldn’t let it go while it was still breathing.” He looks away from the passing flats to Jon, “You ever think about leaving?”

Jon laughs at that. “Every fucking day while I was in training. Every minute those first few months. But… Nothing at home. Mom made that clear. I didn’t take her ‘soft option,’ gone off and gotten myself married to some well-born lady. And I’ve got skills, but they’re fairly particular. I’ve got connections, but again, in a very narrow field that I’m the wrong sex for, and the queen of said field had pretty much put a Do-Not-Touch sign on me. And, of course, once you’re done training, it’s not like you can just leave the First Order. They didn’t take kindly to attempting to do that.”

“I certainly recall a lot of objecting when Finn and I tried it.”

“Yeah. It’s a little different for people in the kind of training track I was in… Hux grads are good for a lot of things, but creative work doesn’t seem to be one of those things, so people like me didn’t train with them. And, during training, they’d let us go if we didn’t want to stick it out. We’re… dead weight if you break one of us, and... a lot of us were well enough connected that you'd make life... difficult if you broke one of us, so better to let us go than make us stay. But once you take your first stripe, you're _in._ So I’m twenty-four. I can still bug out because I’m not done training yet, but… Broke and on my own was terrifying, and an Ensign’s commission in the design corps wasn’t. So, here I am.”

“And here you stayed.”

“Kylo… I guess he’d been in charge about a year… Ten months? Something like that. And I get a call to go see him.” Jon sighs. “You ever been so scared you wet yourself?”

Poe just looks at him. “I’m a _combat_ pilot.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m asking. I know you’ve been in the kind of situation where you could get that scared, I just don’t know if you’ve done it.”

Poe sighs. Jon apparently is not close to any other fliers. “Flight suits have… personal hygiene and waste disposal units.”

“Diapers?”

“Basically. Because, yes, it’s common to get that scared, and also because it’s not like a fighter, which you might be in for _hours,_ sometimes _days,_ has a refresher.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Anyway…”

“Okay. Kylo’s been in charge for a few months, and… He’s cleaning house. I mean… The man is killing officers right and left, and it’s not exactly like he had a reputation for being cool or calm under the best of circumstances. And I get the call to see him.”

“And you shit yourself, because why the fuck does he want to see you?”

“Yeah, basically. Did someone implicate me in one of the plans to take him down? Did he think I was one of Hux’s pets? I mean… Fuck… I just… took over Tactical Design. I wasn’t ordered to do it. But…” He gives Poe a look that says a whole lot, most of which he doesn’t want to put into words. “So, at the very least, maybe I was about to get killed for overstepping my bounds by a light year, and who knows, maybe one of the latest round of the purge had named me?”

"Were you... one of Hux's plants?" Because it's occurring to Poe that maybe, in the beginning, not everyone was in love with Ren taking over. And if he was afraid of being named...

"Oh, fuck no. I never met him, but... Just the holovids gave me the willies. There was just something... terrifying about that man."

Poe makes a mental note to tell him the talking-to-Hux story, but later, “So, you go up to see him…”

“Down, but yes. Heart in my throat, guts churning, in a cold sweat, and he’s distracted and pleasant, and wants to know if I can see about expanding our uniform line to fit non-humans.”

“Which you can do?”

“Which I can do in my fucking sleep. I mean, okay, it’s a pain in the ass, but the droids do the work. We make them standard sizes because it saves on costs, but taking measurements when you enlist, and then making a fucking uniform for anyone who’s not within the standard ranges isn’t a problem. Hell, I can’t put Kylo into one of our standard uniform sizes, not and have it look good, so it’s not like we don’t have a protocol in place for non-standard sized people. Had to do a bit of work for non-humanoids, but so far we’ve only had a few of them, and the challenge of something that looks good for something that say, doesn’t have legs, or has too many of them, is fun.”

Poe nods at that. “So… he gave you a job you found interesting, and that kept you going?”

“I think so. I’m not sure if I’d have left, but… I was on my way to burn out. Just… uh… 'Give it time, and it’ll get better,' but… It wasn’t getting better. I was going through the motions. Kept my people going, but everything was hollow. Having something to really _do._ That kept me here, and going.”

“Yeah. Know all about that.” He says it while watching the latest stretch of market go by.

Jon looks at him, closely, really feeling that. “Do you?”

Poe half smiles, a little. “Yeah. I’ll tell you about it, one day.”

 

 

* * *

“Home sweet home,” Poe says as he and Jon step into Jon’s place.

“Yep.” He heads over to his fishbowl and feeds the fish. “Bonnie, Clive, Tom, Harry. Have a good day while I was out?”

They bop up to the top of the water and gobble the flakes.

“You talk to fish.”

“You talk to BB.”

“BB responds.”

Jon shrugs at that. “I’m going to get changed. Feel like being useful and pouring us something to drink while I do?”

“Sure. What do you want?”

“I’ve got vodka in the cooler and would _love_ some right about now.”

“I can do that.”

Jon smiles at him, and then heads into his room, and… doesn’t close the door.

Poe’s shaft _immediately_ notices that. His head notices, too, just at about the same time. And, sure, okay, maybe the idea is the door is open so he can get his lips wrapped around a shot glass that much faster, but…

Poe’s pretty sure a shot glass isn’t the only thing Jon’s looking to get his lips wrapped around.

He hears the sound of a zipper being undone. Then he closes his eyes, and swallows. Maybe he’s misread Jon. Maybe he’s a lot more… ready… than he looks. Got stuck, moving on, reason to keep going… That’s hopeful and good, right?

Yeah. Right.

Poe goes to the cooler, and there is a bottle of vodka in there. He finds the glasses and pours them two of them. He turns a bit, and… There’s another picture, Jon, and the husband, on the beach, having what looks like is a great time.

“You like beaches?” he calls out to Jon.

“More Lane’s thing. I’d never seen one before the day that picture was taken.”

“Oh. There are some nice ones on Lirium. If winter ever eases off…” He glances at the photo of the two of them again. “You look like you and he were having a lot of fun.”

Jon comes to the door of his bedroom. He’s in his shorts, and nothing else, and Poe forgets to breathe for a heartbeat, because… _Shit…_ He drags his eyes up from Jon under those shorts, which aren’t exactly hiding much, to his face, and… _Shit._ Jon’s got a sort of soft aching look on his face. “Look, if you want to know more about Lane, that’s fine, and I’ll be happy to talk about him, but not tonight. Tonight, I want to get blasted, relax, and have a good time, not cry.”

And that more or less derails any thoughts Poe’s having about kissing his way down that delicious looking trail of hair below Jon’s navel and peeling him out of those shorts. This is not a man who’s ready to move on, yet. “Okay.” He hands Jon the shot glass. “Cheers.”

“Back at you.” He shoots it down, and stares at Poe, who is not moving away from the counter, at all, and then turns and heads back to his room. He still doesn’t close the door.

 

 

Poe pours his shot back into the bottle. Then he gets a wine glass, and the bottle of wine from the cooler, and pours himself one of them.

He’s having a hard enough time making good decisions around Jon because of how fucking pretty he is, and he knows that if he gets more than mildly toasted, his shaft is going to end up in charge of decision making, and it’s not going to make the sort of decisions sober Poe approves of.

He takes the vodka bottle, and his glass of wine, and goes to sit on the sofa, (not looking into Jon’s open door, for a good two seconds, and then he peeks, and… holy shit that man’s got an ass for days, and then he slams his eyes forward) and sits down.

“So, which one is which?”

“Which one what?”

“The fish.”

“Harry’s the little gold one, Bonnie’s the pink one, Clive is black, and Tom’s green.”

Poe nods, and stares at the fish. “Hey guys, I’m Poe.”

Jon comes out. “Now who’s talking to fish?”

“Well, I figure—“ He looks over at Jon, standing there, begging to be admired, and his words die. He licks his lips. He nods. It’s not like Jon’s got a direct view of the inside of his brains and can see what he thinks sexy it, but… Damn, if he can’t.

He’s in a tight shirt with no sleeves, and snug trousers. It’s not… club wear, or aggressively sexy, but… Shit, it cups his ass in all the right ways, and there’s hints of something else very good inside those pants, and his fucking _arms!_ Jon’s not huge. He’s more on the long and lean side of things, but he’s got amazing arms, and right now Poe really wants to watch those biceps flex as Jon holds himself up, over him, thrusting sure and deep and… _FUCK!_

All of that takes a combined fifteen seconds. Then Poe makes himself grin, look Jon up and down, and say, “Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing.”

 

 

Jon strides right up to him, standing in front of him, between his legs, looking down at him. “Do you think I’ve got a full ten centimeters on you?”

Poe scoffs at that. “Six. Maybe.” But he’s sure Jon’s right. The man put him in a perfectly fitted suit by eyeing him. Then he stands up, and his eyes are right on lip level with Jon. He looks up just a bit. “But if you put an outfit like that on, ‘pretty little thing’ and ‘gorgeous’ is what you’re looking to hear, right?”

Jon runs his fingers through his hair. “Absolutely. After all, we’re _relaxing._ ”

 

 

Poe keeps looking. He bites his lip, hard. “You walk into a room, and every man in it’s going to drool.”

“Person. Every person. After all, I’m not picky.”

Poe grins at him, feeling the heat of his body, and how easy it would be to close the five or six centimeters between them. “So, how do you like to relax?”

“Well, baby, let’s find out.” He reaches back, pours himself another shot, and downs it.

“Baby? I know I’ve got five years on you.”

“Four. I’m older than Kylo.”

“Barely.”

“By almost a year. If he was born on Concordance Day… That’s two weeks before my birthday.”

“Oooo…” Poe sits back down, and takes a sip of his wine. “Dancing, clubbing, shooting the shit and getting drunk?”

Jon sits next to him, already starting to look a little loose and a bit flushed from the alcohol.

Poe makes himself look, but not move. The man is fucking sex on legs, and he’s going to do his best to be a good little boy and _not_ do anything about it.

Jon settles back, relaxed, stretches one leg out, foot bare… Shit, Poe doesn’t even like feet, but… Jon’s is long and narrow with really nicely shaped toes, and it’s on his thigh and… He wants to lick it, suck a few of those toes, see how Jon’d respond that that. Party Boy’s going to kill him. “Nearest club’s at least forty-five minutes from here, and I can feel it, I’ve got maybe two hours before I crash. So… shoot the shit, and then bedtime.”

“I can deal with that.”

They’re quiet. Jon’s eyes are closed, and he’s soft and loose on the sofa. Then he pulls his head up and says, glances at Poe’s barely tasted glass of wine. “Is this what relaxing looks like for you?”

“Not generally. I’m trying something new.”

“Turning over a new leaf, Master Dameron? Feeling… responsible or something?”

“Or something.”

“I thought that was the point of relaxing. Let the responsibilities go.”

“One day, Jon, one day. Right now… I can wait.”

That gets an intrigued look out of Jon. “What are we waiting for?”

“You, nothing. Get blasted, I’ll watch your back.”

“Is that all you’ll watch?”

“Tonight, yeah.”

Jon looks puzzled by that, but he does pour himself another shot and take it, shivering at the feel of it burning down his throat. “Okay. That’s enough.” He stands up, still in good control of his legs, and picks up the bottle. “The crash is going to hit me hard, and if I have any more, I’ll be a wreck tomorrow.” He crosses the room, puts the bottle back into the cooler, rinses his glass, and then returns to the sofa.

“What’s on for your tomorrow?” Poe asks, as Jon sits close to him.

“R4-6837, my secretary, knows. Hopefully setting up more of these. And you’re babysitting.”

“Yeah. Chewie’s off at Maz’s. I’ll head there, make sure he gets some baby-free time. Pick up some more supplies for Lirium, kill some more time, and then go home. Got… Probably five more days until I can go back.”

“I thought it lasted ten days.”

“It does, but it takes twelve to thirty-six hours to get going, and they all got sick at slightly different times, so I don’t go back until I get the okay from MX-6.”

“Not going to cut it short and get bit by the last virus of the lot?”

“Exactly. I’ve seen _nothing_ to make me think this is something I want to experience.”

“I don’t blame you for that. One thing I know we’ve got to get is some sort of plan in play for what happens if Kylo gets sick again. The First Order didn’t have any formal succession in play, because that would have been seen as encouraging whoever was next in line to go after Snoke, but I think we should have something like that here.”

“Not a bad plan.”

“Let me guess, that’s the sort of thing you guys had pages of manuals for in the New Republic?”

“Of course. And part of working security was making sure the guys who preferred the number two didn’t go out of their way to turn him into number one.”

Jon’s looking at Poe, eyes soft and warm, alcohol flush on his cheeks, lips wet, and Poe’s a centimeter away from leaning into him and kissing him when he says, “Okay. You’re a combat fighter pilot. How did you end up on security? That makes almost as much sense as hiring a dressmaker to design armor.”

Poe closes his eyes, takes a sip of his wine, and tries not to look like Jon just poured a bucket of cold water on him, because that pulls him right away from how pretty Jon is, and dumps him back into why he’s trying to be a good boy.

“How about this? One day, you’ll tell me all about Lane, and I’ll tell you about why I stopped flying, except for shuttling people around, for five years.”

“You saying it’ll make you cry?”

“Not anymore, but it doesn’t make me smile.”

Jon nods. “Okay. Tragic backstories are tabled for a later date.”

“Sure.” Poe glances to the pictures. “Okay, I’ve been wondering about this, and… If I’m out of line, just smack me--”

“Oh baby, you’ve got to be really _good_ or very _bad_  to get me to smack you.”

 

 

Poe closes his eyes, squeezes his legs together, and does _not_ respond to that. Then gets himself back under control before saying, “Anyway, I’ve heard you talk about a girl friend, and obviously, Lane, so… You ‘verse?”

“Wide as the galaxy, love. Boys, girls, inbetween, none of the above, I like ‘em all.”

“You’ll just wrap those pretty lips of yours around anything, won’t you?” gets out of Poe’s mouth before he can stop it.

“And have an _absolutely fabulous_ time doing it.” Jon’s eyes are warm and full of satisfied mischief. “You like it, too. Don’t tell me you don’t. You’ll break my heart.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.” Not at all. “And yeah, I like it, too.” He thinks about it. It’s been… weeks since he got on his knees for someone. Too long. “Nothing like making someone sing. Hitched breath, flushed skin, that… throb… Yeah, I like that, too.”

“Good.” Jon’s smiling at him. “Not the worst plan I’ve heard.” He licks his lips. He blinks. His eyelashes are so long, and his eyes so blue, and he’s just _gazing_ at Poe and…

He’s thirty-eight, it’s been a while since he’s gotten hard without a hand on him, but if Jon keeps that look up…

Jon licks his lips again, leans toward him, and then says, “We going to do something about this?”

Poe knows, he just _knows,_ that he can close the gap, pull Jon close, kiss him into next month, and… Again, he’d be _so good._ It’s all over his face and eyes and the way he’s looking at him, and that mouth… Shit _that mouth._ He’d wrap those pretty little lips around his shaft and take him through heaven and out the other side and…

He’s still wearing his ring, and Lane’s picture is on the wall, and he lives in the home they share, and if this is going to ever be more than fucking… It can’t start now.

Poe smirks. It physically hurts to say it, but he does. “About what?”

Jon looks like he just had the rug pulled out from under him. He jerks back, a little uncoordinated from the alcohol, stunned.

Poe gives him a wink, stands up, and fires off a salute. “Think I’m going to call it a night. Pleasure working with you, Grand Marshall.”

Jon swallows, hard. He nods. “And with you.”

 

 

* * *

 _What are you doing back here?_ BB asks Poe when he returns to his ship.

“Kicking myself in my own ass so hard I’ve got toes sticking out of my mouth.”

_That’s anatomically impossible for humans._

Poe waves that off.

_Where’s pretty boy?_

“Hopefully in bed, sleeping, not hating me. I think he had enough that tonight should be fuzzy.”

_What do you mean hopefully? You didn’t leave him there?_

Poe grits his teeth. “No, I’m being mature, and responsible. Older and wiser. So I didn’t fucking leave him in bed. And I’m not in there with him. And… _Fuck!”_

BB rolls over to him. _Are you okay?_

“No. I’m fucking not.” Now he pours himself the vodka. A _large_ shot of it. “He practically gift-wrapped himself for me, and I said no, because…” he shakes his head… “Because I want to be more than just a fuck buddy, and I don’t think he can take more than that right now.”

_Doesn’t he get to decide that?_

“I…” he opens and closes his mouth, and then drinks half of his glass. “I think if I said to him, ‘Hey, you’re fucked in the head right now because you’re still deep in mourning, and I’ve been there and done that, and it fucking sucks, but you’ve got to get out of that before there’s a shot for us, that’d… probably just insult him or something. He’s got to… I don’t know… get closer to out of it before I can even lay it on the table and not have it sound like I’m being… I don’t know.”

_You wanna go back?_

“Of course, I want to go back! I want him…” There are a lot of ways he wants Jon, but he’s fairly sure BB’ll just tell him they’re anatomically impossible, too.

_Humans are weird._

“Yeah. I’m going to…” He gets up and wanders idly toward his room. _Wank and go to sleep, probably._

But before that. He grabs his datapad, and sets it for a note.

 

 

* * *

Ten hours later, Jon wakes feeling wrecked. He’s exhausted and fuzzy, his mouth tastes like death, and his eyes feel gummy.

He knows he and Poe did… something. Talking. There was talking the night before. He remembers… okay, he’s pretty sure he remembers everything. The details are muzzy but there are no blank spots. He’d just about thrown himself into Poe’s lap, and… Shit, he sprinted out of there.

“Fuck.” Jon rubs his head. No hangover. That’s something. He’s just tired. Yeah, stims are safe, but you feel pretty rough after taking a few of them.

Stims… tired… Poe… Talking with Poe. Talking sexy with Poe… Poe reacting to being talked to like that… He’s sure that Poe likes men. That feels _right,_ but… With the way he ran out… “Shit.”

He didn’t take Poe for cloaked, Likes men, afraid to admit it. Flirts but runs away if it gets real, but… That’s exactly what he did, so…

“Fuck.”

He sits up, and swings his legs to the side of his bed, he sees his main datapad. It’s blinking at him. Personal letter.

Since he gets one of those every other decade, he pulls the pad close and turns it on.

 

_Jon,_

_Hey, I’m off babysitting now. Wanted to let you know I enjoyed spending time with you. I hope to do it again, soon. If you ever need Commander Dameron, for any reason, just give me a call._

_Wasn’t sure how hungover you might be. You were looking pretty loose when I left, so one of those little food delivery droids should be lurking around with my magic hangover potion. Give it a try, and then go drink some water. I’m not going to say it’ll make everything better, but it’ll help._

_Til next time,_

_Poe_  

 

Jon just stares at it, utterly clueless as to what to do with that.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm not saying that Poe's fuck-me-hard-and-deep outfit is a black leather kilt and a crop top black mesh shirt, but... Who am I kidding? Of course it's a black leather kilt (ease of access) and a black mesh shirt! (If you've got it, show it off!)
> 
> Happy Saturday, loves! I hope it's a good one.


	20. Sick

 

 

Kylo’s so cold.

He remembers reading about cultures that, when their sick and elderly got too weak to live, they’d put them out on the ice, so they’d just drift off to sleep in the cold, and end it nice and easy.

Kylo’s not sure if he’s so damn sick Rey stuck him on an ice floe or not. That would require opening his eyes, and he doesn’t want to do that.

He is sure he’s _cold._

 

* * *

Except for the part that’s not cold. His insides are on fire. From the back of his molars to his rectum is a tube of living flame.

He’s hit the part where he wouldn’t mind that so much, if it would bloody well warm him up.

But it’s not.

 

 

* * *

The third time he cycles through it, he’s identified the pattern. He’s _cold._ Bone shaking, muscle shivering, goosebumps on the skin, no amount of heat in the world helps, _cold._

And then he’s not.

And for a _minute_ that feels really good. He can stretch out a little, and feel how sore he is, and how everything aches, but at least he’s not _cold._

For a minute.

And then everything in his body, and by the third time, the correct answer is, not all the much, is stampeding out of him.

By the third time he knows he’s got to get moving as soon as he begins to feel warm, or else there’s going to be a lot of cleaning, and… Well, he’d almost rather feel like this for a full month than have Rey have to clean up after him when he messes himself.

Some things are an insult to even his dignity.

 

 

* * *

Dry.

So fucking dry.

His mouth has never been this dry.

He got stuck for three days on a Force-damned desert, without his mask, and with one day’s worth of water, and he at least still had a damp tongue when he finally got off.

When he was with Luke, he got a cold so bad he couldn’t breathe through his nose, at all, which meant he had to breathe through his mouth, his lips cracked and bled, his tongue was dry, he felt like he was going to choke every time he closed his mouth, but at least if he closed it, everything got wet again.

His mouth is closed. His body is cold, so, so fucking cold, and that distracts him for… A time… Eventually his mind wanders back to his mouth. That is closed. Because he can breathe through his nose. But his mouth is dry.

He gently touches his tongue with his fingers.

It’s dry.

He tries to pull up enough spit to wet his mouth.

Nothing happens.

That’s probably not good.

And then he’s not cold anymore, but at this point he doesn’t bother to move. All he’s going to do is spasm and thrash.

Nothing is going to come out.

 

 

* * *

Warmth and light, and Rey… Rey’s here.

He unclenches for a moment, feeling… still horrible, but he’s not quite so cold or hurting quite so bad.

He’d be alarmed by that, but… He’s warm because she’s touching him, not because his body is going to do it’s best to excrete his digestive system from both sides simultaneously.

Concern. Rey’s worried about him. That’s not good, either.

He valiantly attempts to say something like, “I’m fine,” but nothing happens. His body won’t do it.

He’s moving. The blankets are slipping off and the air is assaulting him with razors of ice. She’s… lifting him… propping him up… something. His head flops forward in a way he’d find disturbing if he weren’t so fucking cold.

“I’m taking you to the _Supremacy._ ”

He flails a little at that. The last thing he wants to do is _move._ Why the hell would she move him? Everything is as bad as it’s going to get here, and moving him will just make everything cold and hurt and…

And he’s in his bed in his room on the _Supremacy,_ and the sheets are way too fucking cold. They’re like being smothered in full body ice, and he hates this, and then for a second he’s warm, but… It doesn’t matter. He half tries to lurch toward the refresher and just manages to fall out of the bed and that hurts even more, and…

Rey’s got him up, in the middle of the bed, petting his hair, making some sort of soft sound. He hears her talking, but can’t really track the words.

 

 

* * *

He’s so damn cold, and now some sadist is attempting to pry him out from under the blankets, and is grabbing his arm, and…

Rey’s next to him, she’s petting his hair and face and making shushing sounds, but he’s just so _cold._

And then… “Fuck…” grinds out of him. First fully intelligible thing he’s said in a while. Something’s got his arm, and he’s trying to fight it off, but it won’t let go, and it _hurts_ , and Rey’s still petting him, kissing his forehead, and saying… something, but he can’t really follow it.

Whatever it was lets go of his arm, and it’s sore, and… tethered… Something stuck a tube in his hand, and… IV… Rey’s saying something about he needs fluids, and she’s grabbing his hand to keep him from trying to yank it out, because it’s so fucking cold and it hurts and he hurts and…

Everything is heavy and tired and cold and…

And…

 

 

* * *

Humming.

He’s tired and sick and hurts and… small…

Jostling.

His face is against a warm shoulder, and his body held…

“Mama…”

“Shhh…” Rocking… soft, gentle rocking… “Just sleep, Ben, you’ll feel better soon.”

He’s so tired. He drifts against his mother’s shoulder, feeling her gently rocking him, humming a tune that he knows but can’t place. He’d recognize it if he ever heard it again, but… He doesn’t know its name.

A hand, warm, solid, on his back. Lips against the top of his head. Low voice. _Dad._  “How’s he doing?”

The feel of his mother’s voice against his forehead. “Pretty sad right now. Double ear infection.”

“He’ll be okay?” Fear in his father’s voice. This _thing_ is in his son, and he can’t help or take care of it, or… It’s in his throat and making his nerves jangle.

“Doc says little kids get them all the time. Give the antis a day or so, and he’ll be up and crawling around again.” His mother kissing his head. “Tomorrow, sweetie. You’ll be feeling better tomorrow.”

“Here,” Dad’s voice. The sensation of motion. A new shoulder and chest, jostling again, settling back. “I’ve got him. We can spend some quality time together, and you can get a meal without a baby on your chest.”

The feel of his mother smiling. She’s close. Another kiss on the back of his head. The sense of a kiss for his father.

Han’s hand is on his back, stroking gently up and down. “They’ve got the pro-am pod races going now. Wanna watch them with me?”

He doesn’t respond. He does snuggle in closer. There’s a sound in the background. Voices, dull, words he doesn’t know.

“I used to do that, you know? When I was young. Not young like you are, but… too young. That’s why they agreed to let me learn to fly. I had the reflexes for pod racing. What do you think, give it ten or so years, and we’ll get a pod, and I’ll teach you to race.”

He’s got the sense of his Dad smirking. Sharing a secret with him.

“Your Mom’ll hate it. We won’t tell her. Not until you’re good at it. That won’t take long. She’ll fret and worry.”

He kisses the top of Ben’s head.

 _I will, too._ He doesn’t say it, but Kylo feels it.

 

 

* * *

Cold, sore… The fire inside him seems to be out.

He’s a little clearer, maybe.

He’s… alone, he thinks. Something is in the room with him, but it’s not a person.

He’s pretty sure it’s not a threat, but if it is… Well, he’s in no bloody shape to do anything about it. He’s fairly sure he can’t even teleport right now if he wanted to.

Beeping. The thing is beeping.

Kylo finally peels an eyelid open, and for a moment everything is a dark blur, but finally his room comes into focus, and… The beeping thing is a med droid, and… It’s… changing out his IV.

“Dehydrated?” his voice rasps out of him.

The little droid can’t talk, but it does nod.

A moment after that, C8 is standing next to the bed, hovering over him. “Are you awake, sir?”

“Maybe?”

“Then I’ll be brief. Mistress Rey brought you here when it became clear you needed more medical attention than she could get you wherever it is you go when you aren’t here. You have anti-viral resistant Hiffa virus. The droid is providing you with IV hydration, a mild analgesic, and an anti-emetic.”

Kylo doesn’t know that word, but he knows what he was doing before, and isn’t feeling a need to do now, so he fills in the blank.

He nods, very slowly.

“Mistress Rey tells me this is the third day you’ve been sick, and apparently Hiffa tends to last for ten days. She comes to see you for an hour or so ever six hours, and should be here in another hour or so.”

Kylo nods at that, too. If she’s not here, she’s probably dealing with all the other sick Maji.

He wants her here.

Wants to be held and comforted.

Everyone else who’s sick likely does, too.

He doesn’t verbalize that, or try to send it through the Force.

His eyes slip shut, and he slides back to sleep.

 

 

* * *

He’s so cold. Ice on his back, fire on his face… His vision is double and… Cold, so fucking cold. If he lets himself, he can just slip into the cold and never come back… He lies still, waiting.

Be done with his hate and anger and shame and…

It’s so fucking cold.

And he hurts so much.

And he can feel her, standing there, saber… the saber that should be his… is in her hand, poised. _End it._ He’s thinking it, but not hard. End the cold and the pain and the shame of it.

End the image burned into the backs of his eyes of Han Solo’s last breath.

 _End it._ “Please.” He doesn’t give it voice, but it slips from between his lips nonetheless.

She’s not moving. She should be moving. He’s down, on his back, defenseless and…

He opens his eyes; she’s just standing there watching him.

She won’t strike him unarmed, and down. He’s struggling, trying to find a way to get up. His right arm is… wrong. It feels, numb and weak. His face is on fire and numb at the same time, and he doesn’t know how that can happen, but at least he can see out of both eyes now. Right leg… if he can get that under him… He shifts a bit and feels his entire left side _rip_. Chewie’s bowcaster. His insides are inside right now only by his will and the Force. Left arm… Right leg, left arm, just sort of… _Fuck!_ She got his left shoulder, he remembers that now, and trying to put any weight on it…

Cold, so fucking cold, he could just lie back and let the cold take him, but… He’ll have to face Snoke if he does that, and…

He gets his right leg under him, makes his abs pull him up, ignores the squishing sensation that he’s sure is half of his internal organs falling out and collapses back when the ground shakes, roaring, pulling her away from him.

Nothing to be had for it now.

Kylo collapses into the snow, and hopes his eyes don’t open again.

 

 

* * *

Warmth. He’s not so cold. Hands… warm hands. Stroking his face. His face that burns numb, except it’s not, not now.

She’s come back?

Rey didn’t come back. Hux and a collection of Stormtroopers found him, and then got him into a medbay where they put him back together.

Soft hands against his hair, petting rhythmically. He’s in his bed, not the forest on Starkiller. The cold is in his body, fever burning bright. Not a planet ripping apart.

And Rey came back. It took a while, but…

Stroking his hair, and forehead. It’s nice, soothing, and he’d purr a little, but that takes energy, and just lying around, limp, getting petted feels good.

It’s… he has no idea… It’s a time, he’s waking up, again. He’s got to be waking up, because Starkiller had to be a dream, but… He blinks a few times.

She’s next to him, resting, cuddling him, and he feels the thrum of her Force, just a soft easy glow.

“Hey,” her voice is quiet.

“Hi.”

“You actually awake?”

“For a minute.” Though going back to sleep sounds really good. Peeing and brushing the taste of whatever died in his mouth away does, too. Granted, the energy necessary to get up, walk all five meters to his refresher, take care of himself, and then walk five meters back seems enormous, though.

More cold. Rey’s moved. He feels something brush his lip. It’s a tube. He sucks gently, realizing that she, or the med droid, has apparently decided he can start taking liquids by mouth again.

It’s not water. Or tea. If it’s soup, it’s awfully bland.

Probably just a sodium-vitamin-calorie-hydration mix.

It’s glorious.

She pulls it away after a few sips, and he pouts at that.

“I’ll give you more, later, if this stays down.”

He makes a small, ‘mmm’ sort of noise, and then begins the mental gymnastics necessary to get himself into a somewhat seated position.

“Are you getting up?”

“I’m going to attempt it. The IV put liquids back into me, and I really need to get rid of some of them.”

She sniggers a bit at that, though he feels a wave of relief through her, and he feels her shifting, hears her feet on the floor, realizes that his plan to get to the refresher might work a little more smoothly if he were to open his eyes.

He does, and by then she’s giving him a hand up, careful with his left arm, which still has the IV in it. She doesn’t unhook it, and… oh, it floats along. It’ll likely just come with them. Right… refresher… and walking. He’s looking at his feet, which are not moving forward. Probably because his body weight about twenty million kilos right now, and they aren’t designed to move that sort of weight around. Rey gives him a little nudge, and he takes a step, wobbles, and she steadies him.

She does get him to the refresher, and he’s feeling awfully embarrassed now. It’s not like he’s never peed in front of her, but there’s his back to her, taking care of things, and there’s needing her arm to keep him upright, and…

Apparently he’s thinking loudly, because she leans him against the wall, raising the lid of the toilet, pats the seat, and says to him, with a wry cast to her eyes, “You know, I can say, from decades of personal experience, that it works just fine sitting down, too.”

He blinks, realizing that’s true, and decides that likely would take care of the issue.

And, okay, this time her back’s to him. She’s apparently decided that he could use some help getting tooth powder on his brush, and a bit of water in the cup so he can rinse his mouth out, but he doesn’t mind that at all.

And a few minutes later, back in bed, teeth clean (ish, he’s not sure if he scrubbed his teeth so much as just prodded them gently with his brush), mouth tasting like cinnamenthe, bladder empty, he’s feeling… well, not good. Not even remotely good, he’s shivering like a newborn colt, and everything aches, and the cold is coming back with a vengeance, but content and well-cared for.

He drifts off to sleep easy. And doesn’t dream.

 

 

* * *

Nervous. Rey is nervous about something. A lot. A distressed, sick-making sort of nervous. Which, in any other situation, would cause him to bolt upright and out of bed and demand that whatever is bothering her stop bothering her or he’s going to have stern talking to it, likely with a lit light saber.

But she doesn’t want him to notice. She’s terrified of waking him up. Enough so that she’s not aware of the fact that he is awake… Granted, he’s not entirely sure if he’s awake, too. He almost twitches a bit when he attempts to intentionally move, and comes to the conclusion that his brain may be up, but his body hasn’t followed suit, yet.

That’s distracting for a while, then he gets hit with another wave of distressed Rey emotions, and his focus snaps (as much as it can) back onto her.

It’s… something to do with him, and… shit… He’s not getting worse. He’s pretty sure of that. He’d been awake and staring at nothing for… a while. And he’s only thrown up twice (today?), and the other end of him is behaving, which he’s appreciating, so…

She’s behind him, snuggling close, trying not to project, and… Failing.

She’s _really_ distressed, and getting up and leaving… He hears his refresher door open and shut.

Kylo doesn’t want her to leave, because… she’s his and she’s hurting, and even if he can’t do shit about why she’s hurting, she should at least be near him when she’s distressed, but… He pushes himself up, making his body obey his mind, and is working on making himself get out of bed when he hears the clicking of metal feet on the floor.

“I would advise against that, sir.”

“C8?” His eyes peel open slowly, and he focuses on the droid, “What… You’d tell me if it was important, wouldn’t you?”

“I absolutely would. There’s nothing you can do about this other than heal up. If Lady Ren wanted you to know, you would.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“I’m sure that’s true. It’s also not important. She is handling it, and all you can do right now is make it worse. So, go back to sleep. She’ll tell you about it when you need to know.”

“That _really_ doesn’t help.” He turns to face the bathroom door, and has just about gotten one foot on the floor when he feels… Luke. “Fuck.”

She’s talking to Luke. In the shower. _Great._ He sighs at that, angry, and tired, and… Well, if she’s talking to Luke it’s probably some shit Luke’s good at, like, healing or something, and… Well, there’s bloody well _nothing_ he can do to make this better for any of the other Maji…

He groans and flops back onto the bed. Who the fuck is he kidding? He can barely get to the refresher on his own without the adrenaline jolt that goes with being a minute away from puking. “I hate this.”

“I know, sir. It’s been five days, sir. Hiffa is usually eight to ten days of active illness, followed by several more days of weakness, low energy, and healing up. You should be feeling noticeably better soon.”

“Great.” Tired. He’s so fucking tired. That… conversation… was everything he had.

He’s glaring at the universe in general when he falls asleep that time.

 

 

* * *

Kylo knows he’s not tracking time well. He wakes up periodically. For a lot of those wake ups, he ends up sprinting to the refresher, and then crawling back to bed. For some of them, he’s just lying there, staring at the stars. Once or twice, he’s had a cup of tea, or a bit of hydration solution. Apparently, as long as it’s been a few hours since he’s thrown up last, they let him have some liquids by mouth. He thinks. He’s not sure how the droid decides if he can sip something or not. Honestly, he doesn’t much care.

Occasionally, he thinks he’s been staring at the stars for a long time, only to realize the stars are in a completely different configuration all of a sudden. He’s fairly sure that means he fell asleep while staring, but didn’t notice.

So, at first when it feels like it’s been a while since he’s seen Rey last, he figures that’s just his fried time sense.

And goes back to sleep.

But there’s this nagging sensation it’s been a while. So he rolls over, which makes the med droid fret at him, because he didn’t get his arm out from the blanket enough, and he feels the IV tugging, but… eventually, he gets himself on his right side, and locates the chronometer.

04:00. Great. He doesn’t know what day it is, or when he last saw Rey, but it’s 04:00.

He lays there for a while, not really wanting to expand the energy to roll back over again, and it feels kind of nice to be on his other side.

It’s 08:23.

Apparently he fell asleep and woke up again.

14:32.

Sounds… C8, moving through the room. “C8?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Has Rey been by?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Damn it.” He must have been too deep asleep to notice. But… He’s pretty sure he notices when she’s here. Even asleep, he feels her nearby. He tries to get a sense of her, but he’s too fried for it. “Fuck.”

C8 continues to stand there, waiting for whatever it is he needs.

He blinks. “Can I have some tea or something?”

He hears C8 moving around, and opens his eyes again. C8 has a mug of tea for him. “The med droid says it’s been more than a full day since you’ve thrown up. If you want to attempt some mild solid food, we can do that.”

Kylo makes himself sit up. That’s a significantly longer and more involved process than he’d like, and worse, the blankets slip off his shoulders and chest as he does that.

C8 tucks them back around him, but leaves his left arm free for the tea. Which is annoying because he’s a righty and… The IV is in the left hand. Right, that makes some sense. He reaches for the mug, and watches it shake in his grasp. He’s mentally cursing everything in the galaxy at the thought that he can’t hold a fucking mug of tea without slopping it all over the place.

C8 takes it back, puts the straw in it, and holds it so he can sip it without spilling it. He’s also standing there, waiting for Kylo to respond to something.

 _Food._ Right. C8’s offered an option beyond the sweet tea he’s gingerly sipping. He’s… not sure about that. Everything inside him feels tender and fragile, and he’s not sure if he wants to attempt to put anything more complicated than sweetened tea in himself. “Maybe later.”

“Certainly, sir.” C8 puts the mug of tea on the bedside table he didn’t have before he got sick, but is now sitting there with his tea… and a few things he can’t identify by sight but he assumes have to be for him. Kylo lays back down, and…

 

* * *

19:05. Still no Rey. He’s sure of it. By this point, he’d have woken up if she’d been by.

He’s in his room, alone. Well, the med droid is just hovering around nearby. “You don’t talk, do you?”

It shakes in a way reminiscent of shaking a head no.

“I’m here, sir.” C8’s voice becomes clear, as his eyes power on the blue glow makes him distinct from the black around him.

“She hasn’t been here all day, has she?”

“No, sir.”

“Is she sick?”

“No. The Grand Marshall needed her help for a day, and she’s providing it.”

Kylo blinks at that. He can’t, for the life of him, figure out what Kinear would need Rey for, let alone for a full day, but… “What is going on? Where is she?”

“It was decided that your… settlement… is woefully understaffed in regards to medical facilities. She and the Grand Marshall are overseeing rectifying that.”

Kylo blinks. “Oh.” Well, that’s something he’d be completely useless at setting up, especially right now, and… He’s not feeling like bringing Kinear to Lirium is the best idea ever, but… Wait… Jon. “Is the Grand Marshall, Jon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh. Okay.” He feels like there’s something important about what’s been said to him, but he can’t find it amid the scattered brain of his illness. “She’s getting help to deal with everyone else?”

“Exactly, sir.”

“That’s good.” He’s almost idly wondering if that means everyone else is getting worse, or if Jon just slapped her upside the back of the head and told her to stop doing everything herself. He rather hopes it’s the latter of those options, but… “Do you think she’ll be back soon?”

“I imagine you’ll see her in a few hours, at the most.”

“Good… That’s good…” He’s tired again. So tired…

 

 

* * *

Stars. Slowly moving from one side of his view port to the other. Whatever else is happening today The _Supremacy_ appears to be on a standard course.

Rey’s in front of him. He blinks at that, not sure if he’d fallen into another dream. She’s all dressed up and look really pretty, so if this is a dream, he’s rather liking it, but… This one feels real in a way his usual dreams don’t.

“Am I dreaming?”

 

 

She sits on the bed next to him. “Not this time.” Her hands caress his face, and he looks up at her. Then his eyes close, and he relaxes into the touch. Her Force is gently lapping against his, easing all the aches. “Feeling a little better?”

He curls around her. “Now.” He nuzzles his cheek against her knee. This fabric feels new. It’s soft and smooth, and… some of it’s kind of scratchy. He pulls himself up a little to really look at it. There’s a lot of embroidery around the edges. “Pretty dress.” He kisses it. “Prettier woman under it.” He’s coming to the conclusion that apparently C8 will lie to him. Or word his answers so carefully as to be right next to lies. He’d likely be more alarmed by this if Rey wasn’t petting him. “Something interesting happen?”

“Yeah.” She strokes his hair.

He relaxes a bit more, and like every other time he’s done that, as soon as he eases off his warding-off-the-cold full body clench, he starts to shiver. “Good interesting?” comes out amid the clacking of his teeth chattering.

“I’ll tell you about it when you’re feeling better. Right now, I’m going to undress, and then snuggle up with you.”

He curls a little tighter in on himself as she gets up. “I’d like that.” He knows her skin is going to feel like ice against his fever flushed skin, but it’s her ice, and it makes everything else feel better. He’s watching her undress. She’s so fucking beautiful. The dress is brushing against her skin, and her hair’s half down, and… He’s just so _happy_ she’s back.

“You were gone a long time?”

She gives him a little half smile as she finishes taking down her hair. “Longer than I wanted to be.”

“Everything’s all right?” He doesn’t feel anything _wrong_ per se. He does feel how relieved she is, so… Something she wasn’t enjoying just ended, he thinks.

“Yeah. Everything is all right. All you’ve got to do is lay around and heal right now, baby.” She lifts the sheet and slips under the blankets, curling around him.

A contented purr rumbles through Kylo. She’s cold, just like he knew she’d be. He snugs himself in close to her. This cold he doesn’t hate. “I missed this.”

She kisses the back of his neck. “Me, too.”

 


	21. Healing

2/7/2

 

Rey wakes up, just wakes up, because she’s not tired any more, for the first time in… Too damn long. It’s been too damn long.

She wakes up with Kylo curled into her arms, which is not exactly their normal routine, neither is him clammy with sweat and fever hot, but… He’s here, she’s here, and the Lady Ren thing is done, so…

It’s a good morning.

Well, a better one.

And that’s good for a solid five minutes, just laying there, holding him, floating around on her Force and his. She’s not trying to mess with his system too much, just ease him into a somewhat more comfortable, deeper sleep when it hits her that—

She’s sitting up fast, wincing, grabbing her robe, and getting into the office, fast.

“There was a goodbye meeting for the K’Aran delegation, wasn’t there?” she says all in one rushed breath to C8.

“Lady Ren. Yes. There was. But after the appalling behavior K’Oanan showed, and his unlikeliness to behave well in your presence after you broke his wrist, it was decided that being sent off by General Threepio and Colonel Jefferies would suffice.”

Rey’s shoulders slump. “Oh.”

“That’s why I didn’t remind you of it last night. Would you like breakfast?”

“Uh…” She blinks.

“I ordered it for second shift, and it’s still a few moments out. If you’d like to wait, it will be here, soon.”

“Oh… Uh… Right.” She’s feeling out of sorts. This isn’t, normally, how breakfast works. “Uh…” She looks to Kylo’s desk, where she knows a billion datapads are stuffed. “Do I… need to do anything else?”

“Not if you don’t want to. Everything else either can and will hold for Master Ren to get better, or I’ve shunted over to the Grand Admiral or Grand Marshall, and they are delegating it to whomever can best handle it.”

“Oh. Good.” She’s quiet for a moment, looking around at the office. “So… I can just, eat and head home?”

“If you so desire. Or you may stay here. I certainly doubt Master Ren would mind if you were to go through his datapads, or just keep him company. He did ask for you frequently yesterday.”

Rey winces. She intentionally shut down her sense of Kylo as much as she could yesterday, so she wouldn’t get distracted, but she hates the idea of him alone… well, with C8, in that room, looking for her, and she wasn’t there.

They hear the main door to the office open, and a small food droid wheels its way in. It scoots over to C8, who lifts the lid, removes the tray, hands it to Rey, and says, “KI-6O4 will stay here until you are done with your plates, then it’ll return them to the kitchens. Take as long as you like to eat.”

Rey nods, and then ports back to their room, to have a little breakfast.

 

 

* * *

She’s being quiet, but it doesn’t matter. The smell of coffee and real food: hash, eggs, toast has him coming, slowly, awake. That’s not the only thing on the tray. There’s a small bowl of some sort of broth, which she assumes has to be for Kylo, along with a few crackers.

They don’t normally eat in bed, neither being a fan of crumbs among the sheets, but she’s fairly sure that right now, he won’t really notice, and trying to get him over to the table, assuming he’s going to attempt to eat anything, is likely too much to ask right now.

“Good morning.”

His eyes don’t quite manage to open, though she sees his nostrils flare. “It’s morning?”

“It’s morning, and I’ve got some food with your name on it if you want to try some.”

He takes a deep breath, makes a small, _mmmm_ sound, and one eye slowly cracks open to see her, sitting on the bed next to him plate of food in front of her, and cup of coffee in hand.

 

 

That eye cracks open a lot faster when the food next to him registers. “I don’t think—“

“This is my breakfast. I’ve got some broth and crackers for you. If you want them.”

She feels him tense, and just about get ready to sprint for the refresher, but the rumbly sensation in his guts is just his stomach growling at the idea of him maybe putting some real food into it.

Rey smiles at Kylo. “I think your body wants to try some food.”

“Yeah.” He slowly starts to lever himself into a sitting position. It takes a few seconds, but he gets himself up, and then reaches for the bowl and spoon. As soon as he sees how shaky his hands are, the idea of attempting to get any sort of liquid into his body without the help of a straw goes running away.

Fortunately, he doesn’t need to say that to Rey. She’s holding the bowl, and a moment later, the straw from his hydration solution glass hovers over. “That’ll do it,” she say to him.

He takes a sip and _moans_ at it.

Rey’s grinning. “Good, I take it?”

Kylo shrugs. “Probably not, but it’s got actual flavor, and right now, that’s amazing.”

Rey takes a sip. It’s mostly hot and salty, a little cooked onion flavor. If it’s some sort of animal broth, she can’t identify which animal it came from.

She holds out a cracker for him to nibble from her fingers. “If flavor’s amazing, let’s see how texture works.”

He moans again. “You take food that needs to be chewed for granted, until you don’t get to do it for… What day is it?”

Rey laughs. “You know, I don’t know.” She has a bite of her breakfast, and Kylo reaches for another cracker, enjoying crushing it between his teeth.

“Did C8 tell me you and Jon set up a healing center on Lirium?”

“Sort of. Poe delivered it, and Artoo oversaw setting it up.”

Kylo can feel there’s a piece missing between what C8 said, and what she just said. He just can’t figure out what it is.

And really, he’s here, and awake, and Rey’s with him, and there’s soup and crackers, and… Nothing else matters right now.

 

 

* * *

Rey heads home not all that much later. Kylo spent a good ten minutes enthusiastically munching on crackers and sipping broth, and then hit a wall of exhaustion, and fell back to sleep.

She understands that’s pretty normal. His body’s working hard, killing off the virus, and it’s not getting much (any) energy in the form of food, so it needs a lot of sleep.

Still, it’s disconcerting to see him drop off to sleep mid-sentence.

She spends a moment holding onto him, threading her Force through his. He’s… fine… normal… given what’s happening. He needs this sort of rest and time to heal. He’s getting better. She tries to make herself not worry.

And… it… sort of… works.

Maybe.

 

 

* * *

Home. First thing first, she opens all of the doors and windows to their home. It’s not like she’s got to live there between now and when Kylo’s up to moving around again, so she might as well make sure that every speck of Hiffa is dead.

Plus, it really needs an airing out.

That said, it’s possible that in the middle of a blizzard isn’t the _ideal_ time to do this, but she’s also sure that if she waits for a nice clear day for it, it might be spring before they get the place aired out.

After all, it’s not like closing everything back up and turning the heat on won’t take care of any snow that blows in.

Not like anything in there can’t take getting a little wet and a lot cold. (Though she does quickly port her copy of Orlac’s library back to their room on the _Supremacy._ That’s likely better off not getting frozen and then wet.)

 

 

* * *

Medbay.

Once again, everything is quiet. No one is throwing up. The smell is… bad but tolerable. And the general vibe of the place is a lot of sick people mostly sleeping or staring out at the ceiling wishing they weren’t sick.

Rey assumes this has to be what a medbay generally feels like.

Though she really wouldn’t mind _not_ having to know that.

She sees Xanth sitting on the side of Rose’s bed, with Critt standing next to him, and can feel that she’s _not_ a natural born healer. Xanth is, though. He’s _gleaming_ with opportunity right now.

Critt notices her watching them. “Hey. Perfect timing.”

Xanth and Rose look over to her as she crosses the ward to them.

“You’ve signed up to try this?” she asks Rose.

Rose looks just as tired and out of it as Kylo did, but she nods. “I just want to be _done_ with this.”

“I understand that.”

“Miss Paige, too.”

She nods at that, too. Then she glances around. “Finn?”

“Said that if Rose was coming home today, he needed to do a _lot_ of cleaning up first," Xanth says.

“Ahhh… How’s…”

“Still tired, and not up to 100 percent, but _much_ better,” Critt says.

“So, a lot like you right now?”

“Yeah. What you did, it worked.” He’s up, standing, eyes tracking, fever gone, _better._ Maybe not _healed._ Not all the way. But he’s functional, and that’s worth a lot. “Not saying I’d ever do that again, but…”

Rey nods. “Yeah, the idea is to figure out a way to fix the problem without making the cure worse than the disease.”

Xanth is grinning at all three of them. “Which we’re going to try now. You ready, Rose?”

She nods, looking pale and tired.

“Critt?”

He nods, too. He’s holding one of Rose’s hands, and Xanth has the other, and Rey settles back at the foot of Rose’s bed, and just feels what they’re doing.

It’s… supple with a sharp jagged edge. That’s the best way she can describe it. Xanth’s Force is slipping through Rose’s system like velvet. A nudge here, a nudge there, a tweak to this system, and another there. It’s subtle and elegant, buffing something to a shine with silk velvet.

Critt’s Force is electric. It’s zipping through, stampeding in chain lightning through the virus, zapping from one cell to the next. Fast, deadly. Killing off the virus was too much for Rey. She could do it, but it was exhausting. For Critt, this is the sort of thing he was born for. He’s crippling the virus, killing some of it, sterilizing more. This is glowing off of Critt, glowing black triumph… She’s seen that on Kylo, too.

Dark used well. Destruction in the service of _good._

And right here, right now, she can feel the two of them balancing together, using each other’s strength to create something neither of them could do for themselves.

And it’s _good._   

 

 

* * *

It takes a while. And by the time they’re done, Rose, Critt, and Xanth all need a nap.

But it’s a good, clean tired. The kind of tired that goes with hard work that made something important.

She’s pretty sure that the next time they do it, for Kylo, that it’ll go faster and easier.

And she’s also pretty sure that before they work on Kylo, she’s going to bring them to the F-Deck and see what sort of little treat they’d like, because this sort of work seems like the kind of thing one should get a treat for.

But until then…

She ports over to the front door of Finn’s house. If he was still sick, she’d have just ported straight into his place, but with him up and active, that feels rude.

So she knocks, and a moment later, Finn’s at the door. And, for a heartbeat, he looks really scared, and she understands he’s afraid that while he was getting everything cleaned up and ready for Rose to come home, something went wrong.

So, Rey grins at him. And he relaxes.

“It worked?”

“Yeah. She’s getting a nap right now. If you want, I’ll port you over, and then wrap up the cleaning here.”

He’s grinning. “Get to snuggle my sweetie, and you clean? Of course I WANT!”

Rey chuckles at that, and then ports Finn back to Rose.

In the medbay, she glances around again. Xanth, and Critt are napping. Finn’s snuggling up to Rose. Where’s her third experiment in healing?

_Jacen?_

_Yeah._ His Force feels fine.

_Where are you?_

_You wanna guess what we forgot to do while all of us were sick?_

Rey feels him amid the Faviers. _Oh._

_Yeah, they got fed and watered every day, but no one mucked them, or the other critters, out._

Rey winces. Seven Faviers, twelve rabbits, sixteen chickens. _You’re literally up to your knees in dung, aren’t you?_

_Just about. Cassie’s helping, too._

_Once I get finished with the Ticcos’ place, I’ll join you._

_Thanks._

 

 

* * *

By late-morning, Rey is very much coming to the conclusion that, in addition to not being a natural born healer, she is not a natural born farmer, either. She might be _good_ at plants and people and critters, but she doesn’t _enjoy_ it.

Granted, she generally doesn’t take care of the critters. The Canto Bight kids do that, and she would have very happily remained ignorant of what’s involved in taking care of critters.

But she’s not. And remembering the critters also reminded her of the plants, and… _SO MANY WEEDS._

How they could possibly have that many weeds in a sealed microfarm she doesn’t know. Weeds don’t spontaneously generate, but…

Oh, right. They use that dung as fertilizer and the critters eat straw and grain…

Weeds.

She’s glaring at the potato troughs, pulling out weeds, thinking that she _really_ doesn’t ever want to be a full time farmer.

 

 

* * *

By late morning, she’s hot, sweaty, tired, messy, but feeling like she’s actually accomplished something tangible and solid.

Looking at a pile of muck isn’t exactly appealing, but she’s also got no ambiguity about it. It’s a job. It’s done. It’s done _well._ She doesn’t have to worry about any long-term ramifications of the muck pile. There are no trade-offs for the muck pile. It’s either cleaned up or it isn’t, and there’s no reason for her to worry about it coming back to bite her when she’s done with it. (Assuming she’s done a half way competent job with it.)

It’s satisfying. Look at issue. Identify what needs to happen to fix it. Fix it. Go home and have lunch.

But… and she wasn’t expecting this, it’s also… boring. This is messy and sweaty and kind of gross, but it’s also just done. She could certainly use her ability with technical things to make cleaning it up easier (which she did) but it’s kind of flat.

It’s not scary. It certainly wasn’t difficult. (Beyond the physical level of moving shit around.)

Jacen’s watching her ponder the pile of weeds on top of the pile of muck, (which, if it were a tad less cold, would be a compost pile, but right now it’s just frozen trash) as the winds howl around them. “Rey?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re thinking really loudly.”

She nods.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not sure. I feel like I’m looking at a picture that won’t come into focus.”

Jacen cocks his head. “Probably because you’re not sure if you want to see what the picture is.”

Rey exhales long and deep. “Yeah. Probably. Let’s go get cleaned up. Then I’m taking everyone who’s up to walking on their own two feet for lunch on the _Supremacy._ ”

Jacen’s brows shoot up. “Really?”

“I’m not moving anyone who’s sick a centimeter more than absolutely necessary. Which means Kylo’s staying in bed, and he’s on the _Supremacy._ I’m bringing Critt and Xanth to him, and the rest of you who’ve been up and keeping everyone going could use a treat, so…”

“The F-Deck,” he sounds like he’s talking about a mythical place.

And then Rey gets it, and nods. “Right. You and Cassie and Xanth had all heard about it, right?”

“I was stationed there.”

“You’re an officer?”

“I would have been. Ensign McGy. Don’t get me wrong, Ensigns have to salute pretty much everything, including the mech droids, but I did well enough in basic flight training that they’d put me in the officer track.”

“Oh.”

“Ren found me on my second day on the _Supremacy_ so I pretty much only got to see my dorm and the sim deck we were going to be training on.”

“I thought officers got flats.”

“Real ones do. Like I said, Ensigns are the bottom of the heap. Ensigns-in-training are the floor below the heap. I might have technically outranked Finn, but if the two of us gave conflicting orders, no one would have listened to mine.” Jacen smirks. “Okay, they would have listened to _mine,_ but if it had been any other Ensign...”

Rey rolls her eyes a bit.

“Our dorms are three to a room, instead of the six the enlisted get, and that first pip means we got access to the F-Deck, which I had been intending to get to know a lot better, but then Ren gave me a better deal, so I took it.”

“Come on. It’s cold. Let’s get cleaned up and eat.”

Jacen looks pretty enthusiastic about that.

 

 

* * *

 

On the F-Deck, with the kids staring around, mostly in wonder (Jacen’s looking pleased, but also unimpressed, unlike the rest of them, he genuinely had been in a city larger than this, well, at least the part they can see from where they’re standing) it occurs to Rey, that of her lightlings, two of the three of them came to them from the _Supremacy._

Xanth and Cassie have never been up here (down here? Rey’s not sure where they started off, other than not here) before, but like Jacen, they both got out of a situation that wasn’t working for them, on the hope of something better with the Order.

Critt’s staring around in amazement. For so long, this was the heart of every bad thing to ever be a bad thing, synonymous with evil and… It’s just… a really busy market. He and his parents would sell produce and advertise their microfarms, at places like this.

Savarah’s staring around, eyes wide. “My whole town would fit in here.”

Jacen grins at her. “It’s sixty klicks across. Twenty wide. Most cities would fit in here, and this is one of fifty-five decks.”

“How many people are on here?” Cassie asks.

Rey shrugs. That’s the kind of thing the Mistress of the Order should know, but she doesn’t. “It was more than six million two months ago. Not sure, now.”

Jacen grabs Critt’s wrist, flourishing a small gray cylinder. “Come on, I want to see if this works.”

Rey raises an eyebrow.

“Like I said, technically, I’m an officer. According to Kylo, my time with you counts for my time here, which means my,” he holds up his ID chit, “should still access my account, and if it does, that means I’ve got almost half a year of wages that I’ve done _nothing_ with.”

Cassie’s eyes go wide. “He said that to me, too.” She’s gazing up at Rey. “Please, can we go back for a second, my chit’s…”

“Not going to work up here. You and Xanth are enlisted. This is no-man’s land for you two.”

Rey raises an eyebrow.

Jacen shrugs. “Something about maintaining an appropriate image, and no fraternizing between the ranks, and… I didn’t much listen. Rules… don’t generally apply to me, unless I want them to, you know?”

Rey shoots him a bit of stink eye on that. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, I’ve got a chit. Jacen’s got one. Let’s split up, buy some lunch and treats, uh…” She’s never really had to budget for this sort of thing, and isn’t sure how much is good.

Jacen thinks to her _Twenty credits. That’s a nice treat, but not exorbitant._

“Keep it under twenty credits, and we’ll meet back here in two hours, okay?”

Savarah takes Critt’s other hand, narrows her eyes at Jacen, who lets Critt go, and then says, “Sounds great. See you in a bit.”

And then she and Critt and Jacen head off to enjoy the F-Deck.

 

 

* * *

“So, you two were…” Rey leads.

“D-Deck,” Cassie says. “I wasn’t there for long, but I did get my stuff unpacked and a bunk set up. This was my first station.”

Xanth looks around. “My first, too. I’d been on E-Deck for a week when he found me.”

“What were you training for?” Cassie asks.

“I was still testing. I was hoping they’d put me in engineering, but…” They all get hit with a clear memory of him staring at the testing screen, utterly clueless at the more complicated mechanical questions. “You?”

Cassie shrugs. “Anywhere was better than where I came from. It didn’t matter what I tested into.”

Kylo told Rey a bit about where Cassie came from. Mostly about that flash of fear he got off of her when she first came to see him. Beyond that, Cassie hasn’t said, and Rey, other than her blanket, ‘If you want to talk to me, I’ll always listen,’ hasn’t asked.

And it’s clear from the way Cassie said that, she’s got no interest in saying anything else.

“Why did you enlist?” Rey asks Xanth as they wander through the crowd, looking at food carts and resturants.

His eyes narrow a bit. It’s also clear he doesn’t love talking about this, but he’s not as guarded as Cassie is about it. “Mum died when I was little. On Ordano, the orphanages will take care of you for ten years. If you don’t get adopted by then, the guilds and slavers can buy you. Make up for the costs of raising you. I was nine and a half, and… Maybe I would have gone to a guild, spent ten years learning a trade, and left a free man. But maybe not, once you’re a slave, they brand you. Like Jacen’s tattoo. And if you’ve got one of those marks, anyone and everyone can ask for your papers, stop you from going somewhere. I figured that if I hadn’t gotten adopted in five years, that it wasn’t going to happen in the next six months, and decided I didn’t want to risk not getting bought by one of the guilds, so I joined up.”

“Did you know anything about the Order when you did it?” Rey asks.

“Just that they took anyone, and they pissed a lot of people off. Not the lady who ran our orphanage, though. She got a ‘finder’s fee’ for each one of us who went to a guild or slaver, and with more and more adult slaves running away, that fee was getting bigger and bigger for each kid who she could place with them.”

“Did they talk about that?” Cassie asks.

“Nah. Thought about it, hard. The slavers and guild merchants would show up every month for new kids, so… Not like I didn’t see them watching all of us. For the little kids, it wasn’t much of a thing, but the closer to ten you got… She was thinking about losing some adoption applications. Hadn’t decided on it by the time I’d run off, but she was thinking about it.”

“The Bishops hated the Order. Preached against them in their sermons. Said they existed to spread division and tempt the holy from their true path,” Cassie’s looking at the floor as she says that, but she looks up, eyes blazing as she says, “I decided anything the Bishops hated was going to be good for me.”

“Who were the Bishops?” Rey asks, gently.

“Holy Concordia of the Stars, Pure Light of the Soul, Magisters of the Blessed, they ran the orphanages. The Bishops were… the holy men. The… They’d give speeches, and claimed the spirit would fill them, tell them how we were supposed to live.” She blinks. “They were lying about that. It was always just them.”

“Oh.” Rey says.

Cassie looks away from them. Then she points to one of the carts. “What’s a donut?”

Rey knows that’s Cassie saying, _no more of this_ and decides not to push it. “You know, I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

 

 

* * *

In the months since the _Supremacy_ learned of Master Ren’s “beloved companion,” there has been a _lot_ of rumors about who she is, and what exactly, they are to each other.

Rey strolling around the F-Deck with two children, a girl with black hair and almost black eyes, and a boy with brown hair and hazel eyes makes those rumors go wild.

The girl looks to be a young adolescent, and the boy is an older child. And Mistress Ren… she doesn’t look old enough to be their mother. But maybe she looks young for her age. Maybe she and Master Ren have been together for a long time. A decade at least. The younger of the children is maybe eight or nine, maybe a little older, but not more than that.

Maybe Master Ren got a child on… a… child? Could Mistress Ren have been twelve when she had their first child?

Is the girl Ren’s but not hers? The girl’s skin is darker than Rey’s, much darker than Kylo’s. The boy’s coloring more closely matches Rey’s…

Does the Master have not just one child, but two of them?

Or is this the Maji they’ve heard about, but don’t know much about?

In a week, when the first of the rumors gets to Kylo, he’ll be amused by them for a moment or two, until he does the math between his age, Rey’s age, and Cassie’s, and realizes that his people are now speculating if he got a twelve-year-old pregnant back when he was nineteen.

Jon, meanwhile, will be quite amused when he glares at the universe at large and mutters that the only thing he was in any danger of impregnating at the age of nineteen was his right hand. 

 

 

* * *

Voices. Kylo’s seriously debating cracking an eye open, but that feels like work.

Still… voices… plural…

One is Rey. That’s good. She’s here and he feels her warmth and his body relaxes as she sits on the bed next to him. Whoever else is here is apparently the kind of person she’s not afraid to snuggle him in front of.

Person… The other voices… There are two of them. People. Definitely people. People who aren’t afraid of catching Hiffa.

After another minute, and the touch of two other hands… Critt.  Critt is touching his foot. That seems really bizarre to him, until he remembers Rey saying something about Dark Healing.

And… Critt and Xanth? Right… Xanth is the healer.

And they’re here, so…

“Figured it out?” croaks out of him.

“I told you he was alive,” Xanth’s (?) voice.

 

 

The next voice is definitely Critt. “I’m just saying, you smell that bad, you should be dead.” A pause. “No offense, Rey.”

“You didn’t smell too sweet when you were sick, either.”

“I’m sure.”

Kylo’s got the sense of them paying attention to him again.

Rey’s hand on his brow. “They figured it out. You just rest easy, okay. Tomorrow or the next day, you’ll be feeling better.”

He smiles a little, rather liking that idea. Then… Hands… Force that isn’t his and isn’t Rey’s, and… doesn’t hurt. Normally, Force signatures that he’s not used to aren’t about to do him any good, but this… Like Rey, Xanth has a nice, soothing warmth, and Critt… there’s a sort of jagged electric feel to him, but Kylo’s somewhat used to that.

Or at least aware of it. When they’ve worked together he’s noticed Critt’s edges. He’ll likely be good at Force lightning if he puts his mind to it. Kylo’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

It probably doesn’t matter.

It definitely doesn’t matter now.

He’s tired.

And asleep.

 

 

* * *

“That’ll do it,” Critt says to Rey as he and Xanth finish with Kylo.

Rey’s nodding, holding Kylo close, lips to his forehead. “Yeah. I can feel that.”

“Tomorrow or the next day, he’ll be up and about again,” Xanth adds.

“And you two both look like you could use a nap again.”

Critt shakes his head. “Tired. Not sleepy.”

“There’s a difference,” Xanth asks.

“Can’t you feel it?” Critt shoots back.

“I want a huge meal and sleep.”

“Food,” Critt’s looking at Rey. “I could definitely use some food.” _Can we go back to the F-Deck_ is unspoken but clear.

“I’ll order food, but right now, both of you smell like Hiffa, so, no F-Deck time.”

That gets a bit of moping, but they’re both tired, so not having to go anywhere does have some appeal. Food they don’t have to cook for themselves has more.

 

 

* * *

2/8/2

 

Kylo wakes again, later… He’s still got no idea of when it is. The down side of being on a ship is that the light never changes, so… Day, night, first shift, third, sleep for an hour, sleep for a day… There’s just no way to tell.

Almost.

Rey’s in bed, behind him, cuddled against his back, breathing deep and easy.

That’s new.

It’s not the first ever time she’s spooned him, but it’s not common, either. They usually fall asleep with him spooning her, and sometime during their rest (often when Kylo wakes for the first time) roll into sleeping on their backs next to each other, and as they start to wake, he rolls into spooning her.

But now she’s against his back, her lips on his shoulder, her arm around his waist, her Force thrumming along warm and bright.

So, if she’s against his back, breathing soft and slow… Night time. Everyone else must be sleeping now.

He doesn’t want to move. This feels good, here, now with her, under the blankets. But he also has to pee and really wants a drink.

That’s when it hits. This feels _good._ He’s… tired, Force, so damn tired. Sore. Yeah, everything feels like he spent the last month training hard. Hungry… That’s new. Thirsty… Not new, but welcome. His guts feel empty and achy, but not on fire any more. He’s not shivering.

He’s not cold, but there’s no sense of urgency, or impending urgency.

So… fever broke.

He slowly starts to roll away from Rey, disentangle himself, gets himself to the glass with the hydration solution, and the refresher eventually.

Weak. He adds that to the list of how he’s feeling when he notices that his arm is shaking with the strain of reaching for the cup. The cup he hasn’t managed to pick up, yet.

He does, and it’s good that it’s not full, or near full, because his arm is shaking hard now. He puts the cup on his lap, and bends his head to the straw. Not terribly comfortable, but better then slopping liquid all over the place.

He does manage to successfully walk all the way to the refresher, though, again he doesn’t stand for a second longer than necessary, and, okay, he’d likely deny it if asked, but he crawls back to bed, pulling himself into the curl of her body, and lets himself drift on the brush of her breath against his shoulder and her arms around his waist.

* * *

“How’s he doing?” Rey’s voice talking to… Kylo doesn’t have a sense of anyone else in the room with them, so she must be talking to the med droid.

He hears a… he’s not sure. It’s a mechanical sound. He opens his eyes. Rey’s reaching over him… taking report from the med droid. She reads it for a moment, and then kneels down on the bed next to him, and kisses his temple. “Congratulations, you’re no longer contagious.”

“Yay?” he asks, not exactly feeling like hopping up to celebrate.

“Yay!”

“I’m going to celebrate by going back to sleep.”

She strokes his face. “Good plan.”

* * *

Rey looks at the report in her hand. No viral load. Hiffa levels are undetectable. That’s the second straight test in a row that’s showing that, so, officially Kylo is “better.”

Better in the sense of still sleeping twenty-two hours a day and having the strength and energy of a newborn maomao. But regular food will help with that.

Rose is also “better.”

And each time Critt and Xanth try their trick, it’s easier to do. Which means today they’ll likely get five or six of the rest of the Maji done.

Granted, tomorrow or the next day everyone else should be pretty much to the end of this naturally, but Xanth thinks working on this is worth it, and Critt’s over the moon at the idea that he can use his dark for something ‘good.’

He’s not saying it, but Rey can feel how much he wants to tell his parents, show them that he’s not a waste of Force.

She thinks he’s written them. Though he hasn’t specifically said, and she’s not sure if she should ask. She’s not sure how to balance her own history of being a light child, waiting, patiently for her parents to come back. Lying to herself, over and over, about how they didn’t really want to leave, or couldn’t avoid it, with his lived experience of being a dark child, abandoned for his dark, and the way that spirals into deep cuts of unworthiness and loathing. She’s always been more honest with herself of her own worth. And he’s more honest with himself about his parents.

She hopes they’ve had enough time to see the child they’ve got, and decide that they want him, as he is.

She hopes that they’ve also had the time to think about the idea of balance, and that dark doesn’t mean evil.

She hopes that all of this is, as she said to Critt, a moment in time where things are difficult and those difficulties will pass.

But she wonders if all of that hope is just her own light, doing it’s best to put the best possible spin on the subject.

And, in the back of her mind, she halfway wonders if spending this much time pondering Critt’s home life is a way to not ponder those little niggly thoughts that are a bit too present as she moves back into regular life on Lirium, the ones that she’s keeping in the back of her head, because they’re just a bit, too…

Everything.

 

 

* * *

2/9/2

 

Every time Kylo wakes up, he feels like another one of his systems have come back online.

He stayed awake for more than twenty minutes at a go... yesterday? That was nice.

He noticed they’ve got a flower in his room. A flower in a vase. The flower is… coral and gold, and he’s not sure if it’s real or glass. The vase is white. The flower is pretty. He likes it. He doesn't like the vase. He’s not sure why they’ve got it though. He was alert enough to wonder about it before he fell back to sleep.

Then he woke up later, and was awake enough to get bored, which wasn’t nice, but he takes to mean his brain is starting to function again. After all, there’s only so long you can lie on your side and watch stars zip past. That likely means he’s actually staying awake as he stares at them.

He had some solid food the next time he woke up. That was better. Toast with a little butter and some jam. He really enjoyed it, but could only eat half a piece before he needed another nap.

He asked C8 to bring him some datapads, which very much hinted his brain might indeed be coming back online, but then he just looked at them and went to sleep again.

This time he wakes up, and… okay, he knows this sensation, though he hasn’t felt it in a while. Back before Rey, when he’d go as long as he could without any sort of sex, he’d… get this uncomfortable, swollen sensation, inside. That… thing… Rey touches when she slips her fingers in him. After a week or so of no sex, it’d get swollen and sensitive and…

He shifts a bit, rubs his legs together, and his shaft, which was already doing its usual morning (Rey's not with his so he's not sure about morning.) stand, pulses.

Which means… Well… If it works the way it used to… that means it’s got to be… six or seven days since he spurted last. He shifts again, lightly squeezes his legs together, and feels the drip of pre-spurt… Make that eight or nine. He’s been sick and very dehydrated… Maybe more.

In the past, it’d get so bad that just sitting down would make him hard.

He could feel people stare at him in amazement when he’d kneel or crouch, but… The last thing he wanted was his shaft poking out of inopportune times, and keeping pressure off… he really should just get an anatomy book and figure out what it’s called, made it easier to stay on task.

Part of him, a very specific part… actually a few very specific parts, beg him to call for Rey, and see if she’ll… give him a hand, or mouth, or hop on him (all the images of which just make him _harder_ ) but…

Realistically, he’s going to be done before she’s even all the way on him.

And he feels a little bad at the idea of calling her away from… He does get a sense of what she’s up to right now… working with the Maji… which is when he realizes he _can_ get a sense for what she’s up to, so there’s another system starting to get back online… Though… distracted.

He rolls to his side, feels his body quiver at that, remembers why he was looking for her in the first place, and comes to the conclusion that calling her over for seven seconds of what’s bound to be extremely lackluster sex for her, because, honestly, he really doesn’t have the energy for much beyond lay there and let her touch him, isn’t exactly doing his favorite person any favors.

That said, if he doesn’t do anything about this, the next time he falls asleep, he’s going to wake up with sticky sheets, and… Speaking of parts of him coming back online, the part that notices how he smells is now working, too, and _Holy Mother of the ‘Verse_ , he’s disgusting right now. Critt wasn’t wrong, he does smell like something that died. And not recently. Wrecking his bedding with even _more_ fluids is just going to make things worse. He almost runs a hand through his hair, but his fingertips just touch it, matted, greasy, and somehow crusty with dried sweat, and he decides that _not_ doing that is a really good plan.

“C8?”

Clicking sounds of feet on metal floor. A moment later. “I’m here, sir.”

“I’m going to attempt to get a shower. Clean bedding by the time I’m done would be deeply appreciated.”

“I can take care of that, sir.”

“Thank you.”

C8 waits next to the bed. And Kylo waits in the bed. He doesn’t exactly feel comfortable strolling across his room, naked, hard, with C8 next to him, but… They both wait, and wait.

“I have orders from Lady Ren to make sure that if you attempt to walk anywhere, that I keep an eye on you.”

That makes a lot of sense. For a moment, he attempt to will his shaft to go down, but between the state of his bladder, and the state of the rest of him, that’s just not going to happen.

Fortunately, it’s not like he can embarrass the droid, and… It’s not like Rey gave him an unreasonable order. He wasn’t anything approaching stable on his feet the last time he got up.

So he very slowly gets up, (notices that at some point they untethered him. His IV is gone, and apparently Rey took care of the wound because he can’t even tell where it was) and shuffles his way toward the shower, wobbling a bit, but he doesn’t need to grab C8 to stay up, and once he’s in there, C8 allows him to shut the door without following him. (Though Kylo’s sure he’s waiting outside the door to make sure he doesn’t fall or hurt himself in there.)

 

 

* * *

As previously mentioned there are only two situations in which Kylo prefers the sonic to a real hot water shower.

This is the other one.

When he’s genuinely, awfully, smells-so-bad-he-can-stun-a-taunton-at-fifty-meters, _dirty._

The sonic is beyond good for that.

He grits his teeth through the high pitched whine, stands arms and legs akimbo, (Droopy akimbo, he’s not really feeling up to keeping his arm out for several minutes at a go.) and lets the vibrations and tiny puffs of air pull the at least a week since he showered last crud off of him.

The little puffs of air are torture right now. They’re _almost_ enough to get him to spurt. He’s so close he can just about feel it, and if he could will himself to spurt… Well, he literally can, right now just by thinking about something sexy or giving himself a Force hand, but…

But, in a minute this will be done, and then he’s going to turn on the hot water and…

And he realizes he’s never touched himself to _feel good._ In the past, it’s always been about taking care of some perverse weakness, something he did fast and shameful, a part of him he tried to burn to ash.

And he certainly doesn’t mind the fact that he hasn’t been handling his own shaft for almost three years now.

Really hasn’t minded the bit more than a year and a half it’s been exclusively Rey’s domain.

Still…

The high-pitched whine ends, and Kylo turns the water on, letting it stream down him.

He moans at that. Loud. Speaking of things that feel good. Warm water streaming over his still sore and _very_ tired body feels like heaven. He sinks down against the side of the shower, sitting on the base, letting the water just stream over him.

This is _good._ He’s warm, and resting comfortably, and water streaming over him is soothing and…

His hand settles onto his shaft, and he shivers just at the feel of that.

For a moment, he’s not entirely sure what to do next. Normally, he’d just yank at it until he spurted. Do it hard and fast and… Okay, the peaches… He genuinely enjoyed that. At least as a set of physical sensations. He was also steaming in guilt when he did it. Not so good of a headspace.

He’s not sure he ever actually enjoyed it. He certainly relieved a need, but he’s fairly sure he never just… made himself feel good. 

He gently trails his fingers up and down the length, thinking of how Rey’d handle him.

 _Enjoy it, Kylo._ Their first time. She’d thought that at him and… He spurted so hard he felt like his whole soul was going to pulse out of his body.

 _Enjoy it._ He keeps his hand loose, gentle, and just lightly strokes. His head falls back and his teeth grit. _Fuck…_ That’s… good.

Slow, up and down, and just a bit tighter, move the skin over the shaft as well as his hand.

He inhales, long and slow, trying to keep himself here, just… enjoying it… But… He’s so hard, and it’s been so long, and he can just _feel_ the tension, and urge, and _need_ … it’s inside him, deep and throbbing, and under his fingers, begging for a bit more, a little harder, and…

 

 

He reaches between his legs, and palms his stones. For a moment, he’s just holding them, rubbing lightly with his hand, _feeling it._ What had he told Rey? Because touching them feels good? Shit, it does. Then further back, under them, where that deep ache is, and presses into it, gently… He’s not rushing, not hurting himself or hating himself, just… enjoying it.

Pressure, “Oh… _fuck…_ ” deep and round, needy, and it’s right there… Just… he speeds the hand on his shaft just a hair, tightens just a bit, and…

“FUCK!” his head hits the back of the shower and it’s on him, deep, pulsing, in his hand and through his body, and everything is spasming, muscles tightening and releasing, and the tingle/pleasure wave is going on and on and, and he looks down, watching, spurt after spurt after spurt… It’s always like that when he goes this long, over and over and…

Eventually his body stops. Soft and glowy and warm. He’s wet and quiet and… tired. So fucking tired.

He’d fall asleep here in the shower but… that’s probably a bad idea.

Slowly, Kylo pulls himself up, and turns off the water, and wraps a towel around his waist. He eyes the toothbrush, but right now that seems like too much effort. Anything beyond going back to bed is too much effort.

He opens the door to his bedroom, and…

Well, he did request new bedding, but…

The laundry service droids aren’t just changing out his sheets, they’re putting new pillows on his bed, and he’s got the sense that there’s a new mattress on there, and… Honestly, given how bad he smelled, he’s not minding that at all.

He inhales, deeply, coughs a little, and comes to the conclusion that they spaced the atmo in here, too.

Likely all for the better.

He watches droids smoothing new sheets on his bed. They’re doing a very neat, very tidy job, and all he wants to do is flop into the bed and collapse.

But, it doesn’t take them _that_ long.

And eventually, he’s back in bed, on a very comfortable mattress, on sheets that smell like… nothing much really, and he stretches out a bit, feeling good, and…

Kylo sleeps again.

 


	22. Out Of It For A Little While

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, we've got some NSFW images up on here today. Enjoy. ;)

2/10/2

 

There’s this moment where everything shifts. Kylo feels the difference when he wakes up this time.

He’s not sick any longer.

He’s not tired, either. Weak. Everything feels shaky, but he’s not immediately wanting to roll right back over and fall back to sleep.

His head feels clear, he’s fairly sure he can track time again, and yes, he’s sore, but this is the other side of it. He’s done with being in it, and is recovering now.

Which means… It’s time he finds out what the hell has happened lately. And, who knows, if he’s feeling really frisky maybe he’ll put some damn trousers on and go walk around a little, just to do it.

For the first time in much too long, Kylo gets up without having to plan out every move of it ahead of time, and will himself to do it. _Stupid little things you take for granted, like your feet going where you put them without having to tell each muscle what to do to get them there._

He’s shaky on his feet, but he’s standing up, and moving across the room to his wardrobe and, okay, arm’s trembling when he reaches out to grab his shorts, but he gets them. He wobbles dangerously on one foot, and decides that maybe today’s a good day to put his shorts on sitting down.

It’s once he’s got the shorts on, and stands up to get his trousers, that he notices that his shorts are… not staying up.

 

 

They’re his new ones, the white ones that feel really good. A reminder of a very good time on Gidi Prime. He stands and they go galloping toward the floor. He’s _decent,_ barely… Okay, probably not. He’s never really debated if there’s such a thing as _too_ low-waisted shorts, but if there were, this would be it. The only reason his shorts aren’t on the floor is that the waistband caught on the base of his shaft.

This would be the point where Kylo really looks at himself. He turns to face the mirror on his wardrobe. And sees the hollows in his face (hiding under what’s getting pretty close, at least for him, to a beard), and along his collar bones, and the jut of his hipbones, and--

_Oh._

_Shit._

Well… He was aware of the fact that he’d gained four or five or so kilos over the last two years. Eating real food, sleeping, doing sit-down work, working out for only an hour or three every other day, letting himself rest between workouts, he’d put on some fat and more muscle, and he was bigger than he’d been during the Snoke days.

 _Healthy._ Rey’s never said it, but he’s felt her be aware of it. He looks… looked… healthy. He knows he feels that way about the few kilos she’s put on, too. It makes him uncomfortable to think of the marks of starvation on her body, and… He wasn’t starving, not for food, but he knows she feels the same way about the marks working for Snoke left on him.

Judging by where his shorts are hanging, he’s lost that weight, now. Probably a bit more on top of that. He pulls them off.

He shuffles through his drawers and finds an old pair of pajama pants. From the Snoke days. From when he used to sleep in pajamas. Well, sit or lay in pajamas and ‘meditate’ and occasionally drop into a blasted, withered vaguely sleep-like trance for a few hours.

They’re loose, too, but not as badly. And they have a drawstring. He gives it a yank and ties it.

Apparently, an all liquid, mostly hydration solution diet was not particularly good for him. Nothing to be done for it but keep eating real food. Which he intends to do some more of, soon. He grabs one of his sweaters, and it’s looser than he remembers, too, but that’s not nearly as much of an issue.

 _Hey,_ he thinks to Rey.

_You’re up!_

_On my own feet, for the moment._

He can feel her smiling at him.

_Busy?_

_Yes, actually. Chewie and Paige just got back. He’s also got some extra gear, and there are only a few of us in any shape to unpack who aren’t glued to their daughter, so..._

_There’s not going to be another cooking party, is there?_

_Not tonight, love. I’ll be free in an hour or so, see you then?_

This time, she feels his smile back at her.

 

 

* * *

C8’s not in his room. He’s not sure how it is that whenever he feels like he might need C8 in his room, C8 just sort of appears, but right now he’s not in there.

But, right now, he wants to talk to C8, and see something other than this room.

So…

Up, on his feet, the metal floor is unpleasantly cool under them, so he grabs his socks, and at least they have the good manners to stay up on his calves.

And then for the first time in… He reaches over, checks his chrono, which will, if he pushes the right button, display the date instead of the time. He stares at it for a moment in shock, and then _winces._

Eleven days. He’s been on his ass for _eleven_ days.

He supposes he should be relieved to see that he could get sick for eleven days and not have the entire Order implode on him, but…

 _Eleven days._ He’s _never_ not worked for eleven days. Even as a child, he didn’t get that long without some sort of lessons.

On top of that, it’s not like he’s feeling hale and hearty and ready to go take on all comers, yet. He’s feeling mostly like walking into his office, and likely staring at the data pads for a few moments, and then seeing if Jon will come tell him what happened.

It’s not like he wants to actually _do some work._ He just doesn’t want to sit in bed any longer.

 

 

* * *

There are things Kylo was expecting when he stepped out of his room and into his office. C8, his body weight in data pads, likely times three, littering his desk, more reports around his desk, maybe some more work on the conference table. The conference table.

The walls.

To be black.

 

 

Because the last time he was in his office, there were datapads all over the place and his walls were black and C8 was in there and right now…

Kylo just looks around and _blinks._ For a heartbeat there’s a really disconcerting sense that he’s walked into the wrong room, but that’s physically impossible. There are only two doors attached to his room, and the other one leads to the refresher, so…

He, apparently, loudly, thinks _WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?_

Because his office is not black, and there are no datapads on his desk, and, okay, C8 is there, but he’s turning around, slowly…

A somewhat timid thought hits the back of his mind. _I take it you’re in your office, then?_

He really doesn’t like how uncertain Rey’s feeling right now. _Yes. Did you… paint my office? And… why are my datapads missing?_

_I understand they’re in the drawers in your desk, and… uh… the space under your desk. And… uh… yes, I did. I mean, not personally, but… Is it okay?_

He really hates how nervous she is about this. _It’s okay, but… I didn’t know… Why?_ He’s looking around more, noticing that this is not making her feel better. _It looks nice._ That eases up the knot in her feelings. _I like it._ That helps more. _I kept saying I was going to do something like this, but…_

_I know. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise._

He’s nodding slowly. _So… Uh…_

_Baby, I love you, but… I really need to get this done before I can talk. Can you wait a bit?_

_Right, you’re unpacking. Uh… Yeah. I can wait. Maybe talk to Jon._

_I bet he’d like that. And, talk to C8 about Jon, too. I’ll be there soon._

_Okay._  He turns to C8. “So… Gray?”

“Lady Ren requested it.”

Kylo goes over to his desk, sits down, notices the spot under his desk where his knees usually go is filled with pads. He pulls open a drawer, and sees it’s _stuffed_ with datapads. He starts to pull them out, but gets tired long before he’s done with the second drawer, so he settles for glaring at them.

C8 comes over and starts to put them _on_ rather than under and in his desk. “We thought, given how many people were going to be meeting in here, that having your datapads tucked away would be a good plan.”

“Oh.” He’s glaring at the stacks getting higher and higher when _Lady Ren_ goes wiggling through his mind. Is that how C8 refers to Rey? Does C8 refer to Rey? He tries to remember if the two of them have ever spoken about her before he got sick. C8 was calling her Lady Ren, then, but… Kylo figures he must have spoken to C8 about her before then, but… He wouldn’t call her Lady Ren to C8.

Then _given how many people…_ Rey’s brushing him off. Yes, it’s clear she genuinely does have something else she’s supposed to be doing, but… Something happened, and she’s not exactly comfortable talking about it.

He looks over to C8. “So… I got sick, and…” he gestures to the walls, “Rey decided a little decorating was in order?”

“Not exactly.”

His eyes narrow. “Ah. She tells me I should talk to you about Jon, too.”

“I believe she has already given me all the orders I need in regards to the Grand Marshall.”

He blinks at that. _The Grand Marshall…_ Because, last he checked, Jon was not, officially, the Grand Marshall, yet, because, officially, he was still taking advantage of not being that easy to noticed. “You called him that when… the day Rey didn’t visit.”

“Yes.”

He blinks again. _Lady Ren gave C8 orders, concerning the Grand Marshall._ Something _massively_ shifted while he was out of it. For a heartbeat, he’s feeling Han telling the story of how he vanished from time for three years, and the feeling of the entire universe being upside down when he came back.

His eyes are so narrow he can see his eyelashes right now. He makes himself stop that. “C8, if you were human I’d say you’re lying to me, or at least being so circumspect in your ‘truthful’ answers as to be basically the same thing. Why?”

“Absolutely no one, myself included, thought it was a good idea to give you information that might make you want to get out of bed a minute sooner than you did. The med droid was clear in saying that the only thing you needed to be doing was resting, so I carefully chose my responses to encourage that, because physically restraining you would have been uncomfortable, for you.”

He glares at C8. First and foremost because, unfortunately, C8 likely _could_ have restrained him while he was sick. Secondly, because the nerf is right. He would have tried to get up if he knew… Knew what? He’s still not sure what happened this last week. He knows there were things on his calendar, but… But, that bastard is _still doing it._

“All right. So, why are you _still_ doing it? I’m up. If the med droid is still in my room, it’s hiding. I’m theoretically Hiffa free, but I’m fairly sure you’re still skirting the questions I’m asking. So, what happened? Start at me telling you I wanted a pile of blankets and food,” which, unfortunately, is his last really clear memory that doesn’t involve wishing he could abandon his body for a while, “and finish with me looking around this room and scowling at the datapads.”

So C8 does.

 

 

* * *

C8’s just getting to the part where Schiff’s having engineering quarantining different sections of the air cycling system in an effort to get the cyanide tanks out without killing the ship as a whole when Rey appears in his office.

He glances away from C8, who stops talking when Rey appears, and says, dryly, “I take it, it wasn’t an uneventful week.”

Rey sighs a bit. “No. Most of it was nursing and cleaning, at least on my part, but a few days there were pretty intense.”

Kylo raises an eyebrow. “C8 hasn’t told me, yet, about the parts with you.” Then he looks around. “Other than the most obvious bit.”

“Oh.” Now she’s looking at C8. “Wait, what else was going on?”

“Nothing that Grand Marshall Kinear and Grand Admiral Schiff couldn’t handle.”

Rey opens and closes her mouth, and then says, “Is that why we had nothing besides the K’Aran Delegation to deal with.”

Kylo full body winces besides her. “The K’Arans. That was… Shit!”

“Jon, Poe, and Threepio, and I took care of it,” she says, stroking his hand.

“Exactly, Lady Ren. As soon as I knew Master Ren wasn’t in any position to deal with the Order, I shifted command to the Grand Marshall, and he and Grand Admiral Schiff handled the rest, except for the K’Aran delegation, because as Grand Marshall Kinear said, ‘A long time ago, I learned that if Ellie was handling it, all I was going to do was muck it up if I stuck my nose in it.’ So he left it to your group.”

“Was Ellie handling it?” Kylo asks.

“I think it was mostly Jon, but she was there,” Rey says. Though now she’s wondering how much was going on outside of her own view.

Kylo nods again, still feeling awhirl in lost details.

Rey looks at him and pets his face. “Come on, let’s go home, and we’ll talk,” then she takes his hand and ports him back to Lirium.

He groans with relief.

_Home._

And then starts to fucking shiver, because home is bloody _cold_ and he’s in a pair of light PJ pants, socks, and a sweater.

Rey wraps around him, and says, “Or maybe not.” And in an instant they’re back in his room.

“I missed home.”

“I know. But I’ve spent days watching you shivering miserably, bundled up in every blanket we own, so… Not now. Not when I’ve got somewhere warm to be with you.”

He nods. “Yeah… Okay… Just…” He’s looking around. Especially compared to his office… “It’s really black, you know?”

Rey laughs at that. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll ask for some paint, plant yourself in your office, and let them paint or something in here.”

“Is that all it took?”

“Yeah… Jon was redoing the thro—courtyard.”

He sighs. “K’Aran delegation, start at the beginning, okay?”

“Okay.” She gestures to their bed, and he gets in, sitting up against the headboard, and she snuggles in against him, head on his chest. For a moment, she’s quiet, just listening to the thud of his heart and the whoosh of his breath. She kisses his chest. “I… knew you were going to get better. I wasn’t scared about that, but…” she holds him tightly, and then sighs, deeply.

 

 

He kisses the crown of her head.

Then she sits up. “Food. We’re going to want to eat.”

“It’s that long of a story?”

“And then some.” She taps her comm.

“You’ve got a comm.”

“I’ve got a comm.”

And then she orders supper from the kitchens. Kylo watches her do it, and then realizes that if she’s got a comm linked into the system, and can order from it… “You’ve got a formal ID on this ship now, too?”

“Yeah. C8 tells me I’ve got access to everything on the ship you do.”

“This is a _really_ long story, isn’t it?”

She nods. Then she starts to tell the story. She’s gotten to the point where Jon is explaining to her that he needs Lady Ren, and will trade her Lady Ren for every piece of medical equipment she could have ever wanted when Kylo breaks in with, “You took my meetings for me?” he’s so excited and pleased by that it’s practically quivering off of him.

 

 

Rey nods, then rolls her eyes some. “Got fancied up, put on my best Lady Rey costume, tried my best at problem solving, maybe made the situation better, probably didn’t make it worse, beat some idiots within a centimeter of sense, but…”

“Wait,” she’d been leaning against him, head on his chest, but he wants eye contact for this, so he shifts them around a bit, “were you beating on them in the pretty dress?” He _loves_ the idea of that. Though he’s rather confused why she was getting into fights.

“No. Just a shirt and trousers for the fight. The K’Arans. They wanted _strength_ and _power_ which to them means _muscle,_ and the two idiot grandsons needed some way to prove to themselves and their grandfather who was better, and…” She sighs again. “K’Ahuana is timid but smart. He takes the time to think, but doubts his instincts, so he dithers until the moment past when he needs to make the decision. K’Oanan is a walking shaft. Not a gram of brain anywhere in his head. But, he’s willing to make decisions. Poe and the rest of them basically take the point of view that better the occasional wrong decision than no decision at all.”

Kylo nods at that. “Maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe. But they’re also pretty sure that K’Ahuana will stick around and help out if K’Oanan gets the win, but K’Oanan will bugger off if K’Ahunah gets it.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

Rey shrugs. “At this point I’m fairly sure that the universe in general will be better off if K’Oanan buggers off into oblivion, but—“

Kylo’s eyes are narrow, and she can feel anger pouring off of him. Rey generally likes people. Or at least tolerates them. If she’s this angry at the man… “ _What did he try to do to you?”_

“I told you, walking shaft. _Fucking cajoolie._ ” She can feel he’s just too damn tired and weak to get as angry about this as he’d like to, but he’s not, by any stretch calm.

He catches the feelings behind those words, and, “Did he touch you?” slithers out. His voice is quiet, likely because he’s conserving energy for when he gives the order to find K’Oanan so he can personally rip his cajoolies off with his bare hands and present them to Rey as some sort of gift for doing his job for him.

“You know that little hand squeeze thing people do?”

He nods.

“K’Ahuana greeted me first, and he kissed the back of my hand. Apparently that’s… polite but maybe a little cheeky. I’m an apparently single woman, and they’re men, and in their culture that means I’m free prey or something.”

Kylo’s having a fairly intense fantasy of blowing their planet up right now.

 

 

She strokes his face. Her voice is gentle, but there’s some real fear behind it. “Hey, none of that.”

“I’m not actually going to do it.” He doesn’t like the feel of her fear. He likes the sense that she doesn’t want to manage him on top of her own feelings about this even less, because if she’s worried about having to manage him… That means this story’s just going to get worse from here.

“Good.”

He feels the relief she’s somewhat ashamed of right now. She’s afraid he might do it. Glad he won’t. Worried that it might get worse. Kylo’s not sure what to do with that. Especially the _worse_ bit. He’s probably a bit more defensive than strictly necessary when he says, “I’m allowed to enjoy thinking about it, though. He just… put his mouth on you.”

“Does that bother you?”

Kylo’s got to think about that. He’s usually not bothered when people do the little hand holding game with Rey. He watched what felt like a million of them do it at the First Night party. And as he thinks about it, he knows that some cultures do kiss hands, and… Jon’s kissed Rey’s cheek, and that didn’t bother him at all. So… If it’d just been that… A pleasant greeting… No, it wouldn’t have bothered him. But this… does. Because it bothers _her._ “It feels like it bothered you.”

Rey looks ambivalent. He can feel her sorting the emotions of different bits of that day out from each other. “It mostly just surprised me. He kissed my hand, blushed, let go, and stepped back, wouldn’t meet my gaze. That’s about as bold and decisive as he got. It… bothers me because of what it opened the door to.”

“The brother?” Kylo’s voice is dark.

“He wasn’t about to be out cheeked by his brother, so he took my hand, flipped it over, and then licked my wrist and propositioned me.”

Kylo holds her tight, closes his eyes, and breathes deeply and slowly, because he’s fairly sure that it really is inappropriate to kill a man for licking his wife. Or, at least, Rey would disapprove.

“I don’t want him dead,” Rey says.

Kylo understands to mean, _do not kill this man._ And she’s still nervous about _worse._ He really doesn’t like that. If there’s _worse_ hiding in this story…  Calm. She doesn’t want to have to manage his emotions, too, which means he needs to take care of them… Another long, slow breath. “Really?”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, yeah, I _want_ him dead. I still think it’s wrong.”

“Fine. I’m not killing him.” Buggered if he knows _why_ though. You lick a woman without her permission, some bad shit should come your way and stomp your spine through your skull, and Kylo’s perfectly happy to fill the role of _bad shit._ But it’s clear that she’s really _worried_ that he might actually do it, and… “I won’t. But you hit him, right? A lot? He didn’t _walk_ out of that room, did he?”

“I did hit him. A lot. He did walk out of that room, but he was bleeding, and when we fought, they had to carry him out.”

Kylo’s eyes are savage, though there’s a very cold, dark smile on his face. “Good.” Then he thinks a little more about it. “I don’t suppose you recorded beating the shit out of the guy.”

“Actually, we did. The idea was that they’d…” She rolls her eyes. “I was hoping, I could fight them each one on one, and beat them both, and then fight them two on one, and they’d win together, and we could use that to show them they were better off with both of them ruling.”

“Co-regents?”

She shrugs. “Sort of… Maybe… Just… Keeping K’Ahuana in play. If they went with K’Oanan, he’d… get himself killed. Eventually some husband is going to rip his stones off and strangle him after. But by that point, there’ll be a wife and a son, and… Whichever warlord she belongs with will end up ruling, so…”

Kylo thinks he gets what Rey was thinking with this. “So, Co-regents, keep the one you think is best for the job in the running, and he eventually takes over on his own? Why not just find for him?”

“Because at that point I wasn’t certain K’Oanan was a lost cause. He hadn’t yet demonstrated his amazing capacity to _not_ learn from experience. I was thinking that co-regents might also end up in a situation where K’Oanan learns something from his brother and doesn’t get himself killed before he’s thirty.”

Killed before thirty is very specific. So are the rest of the things Rey’s saying about K’Oanan. “Flash of the future?”

“Yeah. As things stand, it’s not going to be pretty for K’Oanan.”

Kylo tries to make himself relax, and attempts a joke. “I suppose if someone else is going to kill him, I don’t have to.”

She snorts at that. “That’s a good way to look at it.”

He knows Rey’s a bigger fan of him using his destructive powers to _defend_ so… Maybe… “Of course, if I do it now, some other person won’t have to. Won’t have to ever _want_ to.”

“Kylo…”

“Just… let me be mad at him. Okay? I promise I won’t kill the guy.”

She shrugs a bit, playing it lighter than she’s feeling it. “You wanting to kill people for me makes me nervous.”

Unspoken is the fact that they both remember the times he’s _done it._

He half-inclines his head, and then squeezes her hand, and says, “I know.”

She nods to him, understanding all the things he isn’t saying right now, and kisses him again. “I know.” She kisses him one more time. “Why do you want to know if we recorded it?”

“Well since you don’t want me to lay hands on him, I wouldn’t mind, at all, watching you beat the shit out of the guy.”

Rey thinks about that for a moment. Then she thinks about how K’Oanan responded to her beating the shit out of him. And the things he said to her. And that Kylo won’t kill this man, knowing what he knows now, because it’ll make her unhappy, but she’s not entirely sure if that will be true if he watches the whole thing. “Uh… You probably shouldn’t watch it.”

His voice is very dark and cold when he says, “Why?” He doesn’t have to. He caught the image of what she didn’t exactly think he needed to see. Still, this feels like the sort of thing where actually talking, with their voices, matters.

“Did you… uh… know that some guys get hard when you hit them?”

Yeah, that’s what he thought he’d caught out of her mind. He makes his rage cool. Makes it curl into a little ball, deep in the back of his head, so he can sit here and _talk_ to her, instead of running off and ripping this… thing… into pieces with his bare hands.

Rey shivers at his enjoyment at that idea, and that…

He stuffs the rage, further, deeper back. Here, now, with her, talking. Just talking. Maybe… talking will help with wanting to do it. “I swear to the fucking Force, the husband that’s going to kill this guy is _me._ ”

“Kylo.”

He glares at her. “Look, I won’t actually do it, I promise you. I won’t. I will control myself on this one. But I don’t know _why_ you think it’s inappropriate. We’re not talking about people who happen to be located geographically near where something bad happened to you a decade earlier. This is me wanting to kill someone who has directly… Directly…” He’s not sure how to phrase what happened. “I’m allowed to get angry at this, and enjoy fantasizing about seriously hurting this guy. This fucker’s… drooling all over you, touching you without your permission, and then you smack him with a staff, and he gets a stand from it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re verbally telling him no. You’re hitting him with a staff. I can’t imagine your Force wasn’t saying no, too, and he’s tenting his trousers?”

“Yeah.”

He rubs his forehead, and takes a moment to stare at the ceiling of his room, thinking that maybe being barely conscious may have had some upsides. That’s not helping. Putting it into words, both for himself, and her, likely will. “I’m trying, very hard, to make you want to do this. To have being Lady Ren an enjoyable and fun sort of thing for you, because I want you to want to do this with me, and this fucker’s tuffing that over sideways as hard as he can, while, also, apparently, attempting to tuff you, with or without your consent, so why, exactly, do you think me, or you, killing him is inappropriate? You _asked--told_ me to kill the trainer who was abusing the trainees. How is this guy different?”

Rey’s got to think about that for a moment. There’s got to be a reason why, beyond just, _it doesn’t feel like it warrants it_. Maybe? Finally, she says, “Mostly, he was just annoying me. I wasn’t hurt or damaged, just… angry. He… didn’t have power over me, and he wasn’t abusing it. My life and success weren’t in his hands. He was… young and angry and stupid, and… I’m not sure he’s got to die for that. Plus, he already lost his crown through that, how much more punishing does he need for pissing me off?”

Kylo doesn’t respond verbally, but it’s clear he’s thinking that K’Oanan needs a whole lot of punishing, and not the kind that leaves wet spots on his trousers because he’s enjoying it.

Then he’s quiet for a moment while C8 brings supper in. It’s noodles in broth, rich and salty, with veg and little meatballs, and crackers floating on top of it, and Kylo feels his mouth water at the smell of it.

His stomach growls.

Rey gives him a half smile. “Come on, eating while we talk.”

There’s a few quiet moments while they both eat, and for a moment, he’s almost distracted by how good real food tastes, almost. But then he’s paying attention to her again. “I feel like… asking you to do this… It’s a big favor, okay? You don’t really want to do it, and… You didn’t sign up to do this with me. So, I’m grateful that you’re doing it. But… When cajoolies go out of their way to make you doing this for me difficult, I want to hurt them for it. A lot. In many different ways.”

She half smiles at that, and picks up his hand, resting it against her cheek, and nuzzling into it.

He’s gazing at her. “Actually, I pretty much want to hurt people who annoy you just as a matter of principal, but, especially if it’s because of something you’re doing for me…”

She kisses the meat at the base of his thumb. “If we do this… together… It’s going to happen, a lot.”

He glares a little at that. And then catches a thought from her. “Homebody?”

She rolls her eyes. “Brother the first, the walking shaft, was propositioning me right and left, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I got the sense he rarely got told no, about anything, and considered it very important to show that he’d overcome my ‘no.’ He’d be the kind of King who would always get what he, or his people, want or need. Brother the second…” She nods to the flower on the table. “He got stupid in a different direction.” Rey starts to tell Kylo about K’Ahuana, and gets to him offering her the flower. They eat during that story, and Kylo’s a lot calmer about this one. Granted, he’s not exactly unsympathetic with people falling in love with Rey, though he, too, wishes that twit had had the good sense to just moon over her in private. Finally, Rey gets to, “He was explaining why I should go with him, and how I’d never have to do any of this if I didn’t want to, and…”

She’s looking down at her bowl of soup.

“And this isn’t easy, and I don’t enjoy it, but… that’s not entirely true… I mean, parts of it were good. The K’Aar left here feeling settled and safe, and that matters. That was good, and I think… I think I got a better solution than we would have had otherwise, because… K’Oanan wouldn’t have shown who he really was to another man. But getting there… Every minute I’m terrified of fucking it up and making things harder for you, but… I don’t like the idea that this is some sort of favor I do for you. And I don’t like the idea that you’re off stuck with this massive job with no one guarding your back. You… need an Ellie. Someone who’s as invested in this as you are, who’s playing the game and keeping the board and the players in view or it doesn’t work… And… he’s standing there, talking to me about how I don’t have to ever step out of my familiar rut, how I never have to challenge my light…”

Kylo looks curious about that. Curious about all of this, but Rey’s mind is still somewhat scattered, so he’s scattered, too, but talking about it as a light/dark thing really has his attention.

“He wasn’t talking about it like that. He doesn’t have my… our… understanding of Light and Dark, but… That’s my life, isn’t it? Getting stuck in the familiar and never budging out of it? Placid and still and… content, maybe. Light… But not light that leads to anywhere or grows anything new. The light of the vacuum of space, sterile, where once something is on a course it just stays put. And he was offering me that. Go with him, and live in fairly nice luxury, and never, ever have to do anything even vaguely uncomfortable again.”

Kylo’s not entirely certain what to do with that, but… It’s at least more comfortable than wanting to kill people and knowing he shouldn’t. “Okay, not that I’m, in any way, suggesting that I’m remotely in favor of you leaving me, but… I think you’ve had enough shit in your life that if you want something familiar and comfortable, that’s okay. And, like I’ve said, I want you doing this, but I’m not just here on my own. I’ve got Jon, and, literally, Ellie, watching my back, so if you don’t want--”

Rey rolls her eyes a little, and leans over, kisses Kylo, about to say something like, ‘I love you, too,’ but her lips meet his, and his meet hers, and stroke, and suck, and she’s moving closer, a lot closer, not breaking the kiss, but finding herself in his lap.

She’s breathing hard when she does break the kiss, and he’s shaking, slightly, and not from a fever, not this time. Rey licks his lip again, just to do it, savoring the feel of him against her, and the slight roughness of his facial hair.  It’s likely been two weeks of not shaving so he’s got a decent goatee going right now.

“Right, there’s this thing we used to do,” she says with a huge grin.

He’s nodding, hands on her hips, poking her in the belly, and _relishing_ it. “It’s been a while, but I think I remember how this works.”

“You damn well better.”

He grins at her. “Meaningful conversation about this last week tabled for later?”

She rocks her hips against his. He groans, loud. She sucks kisses against his neck and jaw. “Later.”

Normally, he’d just fit his hands around her bum, stand up, and off to bed they’d go. And he tries, because the part of his brain that’s aware of anything of his body besides how much his shaft wants to get out of his trousers and into Rey isn’t online right now, but…

He can get her ass in his hands just fine. Beyond fine… Shit… That’s… so good. She’s all soft and warm and fills his hands just perfectly, and she’s rocking against him, and he’s gripping her, reveling in the feel of her in his hands, and… There was a plan, beyond sit here and enjoy her rocking against him. Right.

Hands… Good, hands are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. He gives her another little squeeze because that really feels like something his hands should be doing. She squirms a bit, rocking against his shaft, lifting herself, a little, so she can suck on his earlobe, and Kylo groans, loud, happy, flush with sex and joy.

Push chair back. That… happens. (He’s got the suspicion that her Force helped a bit with that.)

And stand up… Shit… No. His knees and thighs are sending some unambiguous messages along the lines of _this bloody well isn’t going to happen right now._

He groans, long, and loud, and it’s not a remotely happy or sexy sound. He should be able to pick Rey up like normal people pick up a stack of datapads. This should take no more thought on his part than a moment of making sure everything is balanced right.

“I hate this!”

She kisses him, gently, gets out of his lap (which he pouts at), and giving him a hand up. “I know, baby. You’re getting better. It’ll just take time.” She smiles at him. “You go lie down, and I’ll get on top, and…” her voice trails off, and there’s a gleam in her eye.

That does a pretty good job of killing his frustration, or at least banishing it from the front of his mind. After all, it’s not like he’s adverse to lying on his back and having her ride him.

He doesn’t exactly hop into bed, but he does get on it fairly quickly, and gets his clothing off, faster. “What are you going to do when you get on top?” he asks, grinning, as Rey’s tossing off her clothing, standing next to the bed.

She leans forward, breasts hanging in his face, and he can’t not lean up a bit to kiss and nuzzle them, before flopping back. She kisses his lips, and says, “I haven’t fully decided, yet. Any requests?”

He’s laying, head back on the pillows, sprawled out, gazing up at her. “Force, what a question… Uh…” She’s scooting her leggings down her legs, and he’s staring at warm skin, and her mostly naked, and that’s pretty much killed every other thought in his head.

She wiggles a little for him. “Just want to watch?”

He thinks the sound he makes is something like a yes, or maybe just a moan, but somehow she’s on the bed, standing over him, slowly, so slowly, thumbs hooked in her panties, easing them down her body, and right now she’s got the angle so they’re still blocking his view of her maomao, and…

And then she’s got them off and is kneeling over him, gently stroking them along his chest and… He’s biting his lip so hard it’s going to bleed and…

“No… None of that…” She’s kissing him gently. “No hurting yourself. Just you and I and feeling good, okay?”

“Okay,” he pants it. He’s so aroused just from seeing and… He feels like his skin is too tight, too hot, flushed and begging for her hands, body, mouth, anything, on him. His hands reach forward, stroking over her hips and belly and breasts, and… “Oh, _fuck!_ Oh…” He’s gazing up at her, eyes traveling over every well-loved centimeter of her skin. “I missed you.”

She lowers down, laying across him, her body flush to his, both of them reveling in it, kissing him wet and deep, and thinking back, _I missed you, too._ Another kiss, or maybe just the same kiss, going on and on and on… _Tell me what you want, Kylo. I want to hear your voice._

He breaks the kiss, panting, and takes a moment to find words. “Gods… Rey…” She’s propped on her elbows chest to chest with him, grinning, eyes gleaming at him.

“Talk to me, love.”

“You… On top of me.” He swallows, hard. “I want to see you and feel you. Want you to raise up, on your knees, and let me see you slide down my shaft.”

She does rise up, straddling his hips, and she reaches down, making sure he’s in place, rubbing the tip of him against her a few times, and he sighs, so happy at that, and she moans, softly, because he’s in a very good spot right now, circling her pearl with the tip of his shaft, over and over, wet and slick.

“Nothing else looks like that,” breathes out of Kylo. Because nothing does. It’s so… everything. Her and him, and them together, his body lighting up hers, and hers making his rise harder and fuller. All of that wet, pink flesh gliding over each other.

 

 

“Want to see better?” Rey asks.

“Yes!” Half moan, half gasp, all desire.

She scoots one of the pillows behind his head, so he’s got an easier view, and then shifts him back, just a bit, and sinks down on him and… He can’t keep his eyes open. It feels too good. They slip shut and her body is on his and all of his focus is on the sensation of wet and snug and her… _Rey._

She’s slowly easing up, and back down again, and it’s good…

So good… His eyes slide open so he can watch her, pink and glistening, enveloping him.

Too good… Up and down and both of them wet and gleaming in the soft light of his room.

Done.

 

 

Kylo winces. That was… embarrassing really. Way too fast, and… not much build up, and maybe three pulses and… He feels cheated. His traitor shaft leapt over the edge way too damn soon. He wanted his first time with her again to be amazing, and the only amazing thing about that was him setting a new speed record for fastest spurt.

Rey’s looking down at him, head cocked. She _knows_ what happened. She likely felt it, too, but… “Really?”

He rolls his eyes, and his head flops back into the pillow. “Really. I…” She snuggles down on him, face on his chest, not pulling off or away, which he appreciates, and also not looking him in the eye, which he also appreciates. “thought I took enough of the edge off earlier, but… I guess not.”

That gets her propping up on her arms. “Took the edge off?” She’s got an interested and amused look on her face.

He’s about to just blast her with the feel of it when he remembers how much she liked the idea of him talking about sex with Jon, and… well, his shaft, stupid bloody traitor, is going to be doing exactly nothing for at least a few minutes, and given how sick he’s been, likely longer, so… Maybe she’ll like him talking about sex himself.

He gets hit with a wall of approving Rey emotions, so apparently, yes.

“The… thing, you touch, when your finger is in me…”

“The spongy nub?”

“Yeah. Sure. That. If…” he kisses her nose. “You and I… or, I guess, me on my own, have enough sex, it mostly just sits there and does whatever it is it normally does, and it’s completely unnoticeable, unless you’re petting it.”

“Okay.”

“If I don’t have enough sex, either with you or me, I do start to notice it. And if I go long enough, it gets really sensitive. Feels… urgent and swollen… actually, this is a bad comparison, but it’s as close as I’ve got, it’s sort of like having an erection on the inside.” He imagines the feel of it, and hits her with that.

“That’s… good? Maybe?” Rey asks.

“It can feel pleasurable, but… I don’t like what I have to do to get it to feel that way. I like it a lot better when it feels that way because you’re playing with it.”

“Okay, I can understand that. What’s long enough?”

“I start to notice it like three or four days in, and by seven or eight, just squeezing my legs together, or sitting on a hard chair is enough pressure to give myself a stand.”

Her brows raise. “I didn’t know it… did that.”

“No reason for you to know that. Not like, except for the last week, we’ve ever gone that long without having sex since we’ve been together.”

“And you’d really rather prefer it stayed that way.”

“You wouldn’t?” He raises an eyebrow, and then realizes he’s got no idea how often Rey actually wants to have sex. He doesn’t know if his desire is contagious enough that he’s setting the schedule for both of them, or if they’re just generally in synch on this.

She catches his thought. “I used to do it every day for myself when I was on my own.”

“Right.”

“And, I’d really rather prefer that we didn’t have to go a week or more without sex again, too.”

He grins at her.

She kisses his grin. “So, that thing gets swollen and urgent feeling, and…”

“And if I keep not touching myself, usually on night eight or nine I’ll go to sleep, have some intense dreams, and wake up glued to my pajamas.”

“Oh. You don’t have to…”

He shakes his head. “Yeah. My body’ll take care of itself if I just let it be. Anyway, yesterday… day before…? Not today. I wake up, and I can feel it, I’m, at most, two naps away from completely wrecking the bedding, so… for a moment, I thought about seeing if you’d come help me out, but then I decided I had to smell like something that died, and…” he rolls his eyes again, “I didn’t think I’d make it past ten seconds, so… I took care of myself in the shower, and… I was hoping that by the time I got you in on the party, I’d be able to go for more than two thrusts, but… apparently not.”

She’s smiling at him. “What’d you do in the shower?”

“Gently stroked it a few times and spurted so hard I thought I was going to pass out. Hot water and not exactly being healed up might have had something to do with the almost passed out part, too.”

She laughs at that. “I wish I’d seen.”

“You want to watch me touch myself?”

“I want to watch you do… anything you want to do. I like seeing you hot and sexy and spurting.”

That makes him grin. And for a moment, they’re just lying there, together, happy with one and other, and then a thought hits him. “You didn’t have the plague all last week.”

“I did not.”

“So… did you… take the edge off, for yourself?”

She laughs at that. He’s grossly underestimating how hard she was working. She also doesn’t think he needs to know that, not really. Not now. “Not at first. Healing, tending to everyone, nursing, getting ready to Queen, Queening… Mostly I was just tired. But, when things calmed down…” she’s blushing a little.

She’s laying astride him, and he’s still inside her. Soft, but snug. He likes the feel of it, warm and comforting. Another idea starts to form. He nudges her a bit, so she’s straddling him. Kylo licks his lips. He’s seen her touch herself when she rides him sometimes, but he’s often so into… all of it, that he’s not really watching what she does with herself.

“Show me?” he says.

He doesn’t say it, but she can feel him thinking, _after all, I’m useless for a while, so you might as well get your spurt, too._

“And watching might help nudge things away from useless?” Rey asks.

He rolls his eyes at that, too. “I hope.” He’s feeling pretty boneless and limp right now. “No promises. Next week, sure, but…”

She kisses him. “But you’re healing.”

“Wanna be healed.”

“I know.” She wriggles a bit on him. “If I move too much, you’ll slip out.”

“I can live with that.”

“Yeah, but I _like_ you inside me.”

“And I _love_ being there. But I want to see this, too, so… If I slip out, I’ll get back sooner or later.”

She kisses him, and then scoots back up, so she’s straddling his hips, leaning back a little. “You see everything?”

 

 

“Oh yeah…” There’s a gleam in his eyes as he’s watching her, from face to maomao and back again.

“It’s… Not the night after the dinner. I know that. The night after that, or the one after that. I’ve finally gotten enough sleep I’m not dead on my feet. And the Order thing is done, so I’m not worrying about it. And it’s night, and I’m sleepy, sort of, but I’m just not falling asleep.

“You’re next to me, completely out of it, breathing deep and easy. Warm and near and—“

“You must really love me.”

Rey looks at him curiously. “I do, but…”

“I did my best not to look at myself before I got in the shower, but I’ve got an idea of how I smelled, so…”

“And now I know what day it was. You’d gotten out of bed long enough to get a shower. I mean, yes, I do love you, but… Yeah, you sort of looked and smelled like something that had drowned in a sewage vat, so I was more than willing to cuddle you, but nothing even remotely sexy was going to happen. But that night, you didn’t, and I think we had new sheets, so…”

He giggles at that. “Well, that’s the same day I _took the edge off_ so… Yesterday?”

“Probably.” She rocks against him a bit. “Day before, actually.”

“Okay.”

She slips her hands down her body, middle finger resting just slightly above her pearl. “You’re sleeping, and I don’t want to wake you up. I figured the last thing you needed was interrupted sleep.”

“You’re welcome to wake me up anytime you like if it involves sex.”

She smiles at him. “I’ll keep that in mind. Granted, since I know your sleep sex trick, maybe if there’s a next time, neither of us will have to wake up.”

That’s an idea that’s never sprouted in Kylo’s mind before, but he’s certainly willing to see about playing with it in the future. “We’ll have to experiment with that.”

“We will.”

Her hand is just staying still, finger touching, but not moving. “So, it’s night, I’m sleeping, and you’re… randy?”

“Restless. It’s not that distinctly sexual urge you get.”

“Okay.” He thinks about that. “Do you get randy?”

“The way you do? Rarely. Sometimes, I really want _you_ though, and that’s sexual. But if we’re not together, I’m unlikely to feel that.”

He shifts his hips a bit. Again, wondering how much of what he feels is his own desire reflected back at him through her. “But… you want this, right?”

“Yes!” She leans forward, and kisses him deeply. “I like this _a lot._ But… I’ll feel spikes of it off of you while you’re supposed to be doing something else.”

He nods. That happens fairly often. At least a few times a day when he’s healthy.

“And, when we aren’t together… I mean, it happens, but it’s rare. But when you’re here…” She traces her fingers down his chest, and lays them against her pearl. “And that night, you were here, and smelling good, and the bedding was clean, and I wasn’t sleepy, and feeling restless. Eager.”

He’s grinning at her. “An itch that needed some good scratching.”

“Something like that. And, it’s silly, but it took a while to remember what I used to do when I’d get _restless._ ” Her fingers start a slow, easy, gentle circle over her pearl. “Not wet enough.” She holds the fingers out to him, traces them over his lips, and he gets the idea, rapidly, sucking them between his lips and licking them gently.

“Definitely want you good and wet.”

She nods. “Everything’s better wet.”

“I remember saying that to you,” he replies, giving her fingers one last, soft lick.

“So do I.” Her fingers go back to her pearl, and she moans a little as they slip, wet and slick over her skin. “Much better.” She’s going slow, and he lets his senses flow into hers, soaking in not just the sight of this, but how it feels. His eyes slip shut again, this time to heighten the feel of her doing it to herself.

“I didn’t want to wake you up, so I had to go very slow, and very gentle.”

It’s a tease. Enough to light her up, perk her interest, not enough to get over the edge. He can feel her body swell, and the soft clench of her maomao on him, and the thrum of her fingers playing herself.

He opens his eyes. “But you wanted to go harder and faster?” His eyes don’t leave her fingers and maomao.

“I wanted a lot of things.”

He glances up to her eyes, steeping in the way she’s looking at him. And maybe random sparks of erotic lust aren’t part of her makeup, but right now she’s definitely got a come fuck me look in her eyes.

Kylo mentally growls at his traitor shaft, because right now harder and faster and deeper would likely be a world of treat for both of them.

Instead he gently pats the inside of her leg, letting her know to lift up a bit. She raises an eyebrow at him, because he’ll slip out if she does that, but he knows that, and nods. He’s got… a plan.

Sort of.

She does kneel up, and he does slip out, and then he scoots his hand under her, two fingers pointing up. “These go all night, no matter what.”

Rey grins at that, and sinks back down onto his fingers, groaning.

That sound, her voice low and needy, the sight of it, her riding his hand as she fingers herself, that gets a twitch out of his shaft. “Better?” he asks.

“Yes…” Groans out of Rey. “I… needed that. I was thinking about if we had a dildo… And…” Her voice stutters as she rubs over her pearl, and he wiggles his fingers a bit. “Just like that.”

He rocks them back and forth inside her. “That?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes slip shut, and he basks in the sight of it. Rey, head back, eyes closed, skin flushed, rubbing herself, and riding his hand.

“Fuck, Rey… You look…”

Her eyes slowly open, and she gazes down at him. “Yeah?”

He nods slowly, eyes black in the dim light of his bedroom. “ _Yeah.”_

“I was…” She’s rocking back and forth on his hand, and he adds a third finger. “Oh… Kylo!”

He’s grinning looking up at her, feeling his shaft start to swell again. “I love you.”

“Love you!” She rocks up and down, her fingers moving faster. He can feel her body starting to squeeze his and his shaft gives another little swell of interest in that.

His voice is breathy as he asks, “What would you have done if we’d had a dildo?”

“Oh…” She looks startled, not remembering why he’s bringing that up, and… “Right…” She licks her lips, panting a bit. “Uh… Was thinking… What if you caught me using it? Laying next to you, rubbing off, slowly, gently, not trying to wake you up, but with it deep in me and—“

He nudges her hand out of the way, so it’s his thumb on her jewel, and his fingers in her, and he moves them both very soft, very gentle.

“Probably would have gotten so hard so fast I’d have passed out.” He’s not quite there, yet. Fuller, thicker, but not yet _hard._ He lets go of her for a moment, and a few strokes over his shaft with his hand wet from her slick and his spurt does it.

He shifts himself, and she slides down on him, groaning as he fills her, wide and deep.

“There.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them knows which one says which.

She’s moving fast, chasing her spurt, and he knows he’s not going to last long this time either. Just… enough, he hopes.

Kylo doesn’t, not really, believe in heaven. And he hopes there’s no Hell.

That said, right now, on his back, with Rey straddling him, letting him watch as she rides him… Right now he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven.

He’s palming her ass, and she’s leaning forward a bit as she rocks back and forth, and…

“You’re so perfect,” he says to her. Each cheek fits in his hand, and she’s rocking, fast, breasts brushing over his lips, letting his eyes dance between the view of his shaft in her, or her breasts and face above him, and… “Fuck Rey! I love this and I love you and… Oh, shit! You feel and look so good.”

He can feel her grinning.

“You really like to watch.”

“Fuck, Rey, YES!”

She uses her Force to shift them a bit so they’re facing the mirror on the door of his wardrobe.

He pushes up, leaning back on his elbows, so he can see better.

He’s watching her ass. It’s soft and giving, bouncy, a glorious bit of jiggle in his palms, with a deeper, firmer core of muscle under…

And the view…

She’s spread wide around him, and… _nothing_ else looks like this. Her pink, wet, glistening, and him sliding into her. Her body snug and wrapped around him.

She’s rubbing her jewel, keeping herself paced to him right now. He’s… almost… He needs to bite his lip, needs a bit of pain to tone him down, but she’s already told him no on that… He just wants to slow himself down a _little._

Just wants to really _feel_ it.

Rey slows down, moving up and down him in a long shivery rush. Drawing it out for both of them. Her eyes are closed, jaw clenched, and she’s breathing hard.

He’s watching her, enraptured, eyes wide, body simmering with pleasure. He can’t even say it. His voice won’t form the words, but his lips move with it, “fuck, love, fuuck” just breath and prayer and holy profanity of pleasure so sharp it can’t pass through lips without staining them with the flush of blood.

She’s hovering over him, lips a bare caress above his.

Kylo nods, he’s good, he doesn’t need to string this out any more.

Rey nods, too, catching his lips with hers, breathing in his prayer of thanksgiving and lust, rocking against him faster, harder, taking him deeper, and both of them leap off the edge, landing in a sparkling shatter of a billion mirrors shot through with light.

She collapses against his chest, both of them breathing hard, and twitching gently.

And there are likely things they should say, or think, but… Right now doesn’t need that. It just needs them, together. The rest of it will take care of itself, eventually.

 

 

* * *

And later, for the first time in too damn long, Rey curls herself into the curve of Kylo’s chest, his arms around her, and sighs in contentment.

She doesn’t have much in the way of ideals of _home_ but this sensation, him around her, his breath against her shoulder, the rightness of her body against his, this encapsulates any ideas of it she does have.

He kisses her shoulder, aware of what she’s feeling, holding her a little tighter. _I love you._ He thinks it and feels it, and lets it purr out of him and steep through her.

He feels it come back to him, her own versions of those feelings cradling him.

And from there, for the first time in a long while, they drift off to sleep, together.

 


	23. Many Talks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first off, we're in NSFW territory again.
> 
> Second of all, I swear I rendered an image of Poe and Kylo together, but apparently it's lost in the ethers of my computer. I'll eventually get it re-rendered and up.

2/11/2

 

Kylo’s not sure if his lack of leap out of bed, gobble down a good breakfast, and attack the day like it’s a ravening beast about to devour his family is because he’s still not entirely healed up, or possibly because he’s just so fucking comfortable, in bed, with Rey in his arms, sleeping quietly, or that… well… He’s not exactly feeling any real need to go do _Master_ stuff.

It just seems sort of vague and tenuous, and if Kinear and Schiff and Jon can do the job without him, maybe they could just… keep doing it without him. At least, for a few more days…

He’s not sure if that’s a comforting thought or not.

He closes his eyes and snuggles in deeper with Rey. He’s probably still getting better. That’s likely why anything other than snuggling with her seems like… It’s beside the point.

 

 

* * *

The second time he wakes up, he’s feeling a bit more like, maybe, at some point, getting out of bed would be a decent plan.

Maybe.

If he can’t get Rey to get back into it with him.

But she’s not in it, which seems like many, many shades of wrong. Though he does notice the door to the refresher is open, and he can hear her moving around, and water. That’s the sound of water turning on…

Shower time… With his favorite person.

Okay, that’s worth getting out of bed for.

 

 

* * *

She smiles at him when he ambles in. Still tired, still weak, but… Well, he pretty much didn’t move for a week straight, unless he absolutely had to, so… He’s feeling mopey about this, but, it’ll probably take at least a few days to get his full strength back.

“I figured you’d be in when you heard the water,” she says, brushing her teeth.

“You figured right.” He reaches for his own toothbrush, and then glares at himself in the mirror, rubbing his face. Rey’s laser hair removal device means he only has to shave once a week, but… He was probably on day five or six when he got sick, and then on his ass for eleven days, and today’s twelve, and… Yeah, he’s got… well, the part around his lips and chin and neck actually looks like a functional beard now. Less like the wiry half-nest of sad little black hairs that’s his mental image of him with a beard. His cheeks and jawline are pretty much hairless, except for the few stragglers. Which is pretty much exactly his mental image of himself with a beard.

His eyes narrow a bit. He, probably, could just skip it. Maybe, if he’s feeling really ambitious, he’ll see Jon, Kinear, and Schiff today, and none of the three of them will blink if he looks a bit worse for the wear. He just… hates, how even with the scar, even with an extra twenty-five centimeters of hair, and more than a decade of growing up, this is still his image of Master Ben, and…

He eyes his razor. His hands… are probably steady enough, but he really doesn’t want to be scraping a blade over his skin when his hands are a bit shaky. He’s dealt with enough pain recently, he doesn’t need to add cutting a chunk out of his chin or neck to the list.

Rey’s watching him do that while she brushes her teeth. When she finishes, she says, “You like it when I wash your hair, and I like washing your hair, so... You trust me, right?”

He realizes that she means that she could shave him, and his eyes go wide, because _that_ hits him, hard. He nods, slowly. The idea of her shaving him is nothing that’s ever been in danger of occurring to him, but now that he’s thinking of, it he really likes the idea.

Rey grabs his razor and brush and gel, and takes them into the shower with them. “It’ll work in here, right?”

He nods. “I do it at the sink so I can see what I’m doing.”

“I don’t need a mirror to see.”

“No, you don’t.”

 

 

* * *

He loves his shower. He loves hot water. He loves, to an infinite power more, Rey in said shower, sharing the hot water with him, shampooing his hair.

It feels so astoundingly good to him. He's sitting on the floor of the shower, and she's a bit higher up, on the little... Well, until Rey was in his life, he always thought it was some sort of shelf, it's where his soap, sponge, and shampoo lives, but she can sit on it pretty easily, so maybe it's a seat.

“I knew I was going to like sex. I maybe wasn’t supposed to, and I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get to try it, but… I just _knew_ that was going to be good.”

 

 

His head is tipped forward as the water rinses down over them. His eyes are closed, so he can’t see the way she’s looking at him right now, a mix of confusion and tenderness, but he can feel it.

So he keeps talking, “But, I had no idea of… any of this. If my parents ever did things like this, I never saw it. Luke certainly never mentioned it. We had communal showers, but no one ever offered to wash anyone else’s back, at least not while I was in there.” He twists a little and kisses her knee. “How fucking stupid is this? The only other couple I actually _knew_ was Hux and Phasma, and if they ever did things like this, they never thought about it anywhere near me.”

She smiles a little, at that, and kisses the crown of his head. She straightens up, and he stands up, too, as she says, “I didn’t see, well, _this,_ no water showers on Jakku, but… You don’t mean the shower, not really.”

He kisses her, and signals for her to sit down, so he can shampoo her hair. “I do, because I really like this,” he pours the shampoo into his hands, and starts to lather it, “and I don’t because I’m talking about… caring for each other, and… just… this, here, with each other.”

Rey moans softly when his fingers find her hair, and began to work through it. “This is good.”

“It really is.”

They’re quiet as he continues to work the shampoo through her hair. Eventually she says, and he can feel there’s a sadness in her voice, and he knows why, “There were a few families… Not children… People didn’t have children at Niima. Not the people who lived there. Ones who came to trade did… but… Couples, and more… sometimes more. And in the evenings, you’d see them outside, catch that hour before the sun completely set, when the heat was leaving the air, but the ground was still warm. The stars would start to come out, and… I liked that time. And sometimes, before I left Niima… There’d be families, sharing their food and water, laughing, talking, and gentle touches, and happy looks.” She rubs her lips together. Kylo can feel her thinking about how everyone on Niima is dead now. “There were times I watch that, and want it. That was my image of my ‘family.’ People who would share food and water with me, and give me hugs, and listen to my stories.”

“But they didn’t share with you.” It’s not a question. He’s not, hearing stories like this, sad that everyone on Niima is dead. There’s a satisfied purr of warmth in him that the people who didn’t share with Rey are dead. And more… understanding isn’t the right word, because he does _understand_ why she gets nervous when he wants people dead on her behalf, but more resignation to the fact that he _can’t_ do that again.

Rey shakes her head. “Mostly. When… After, the ladies brought me tea, and that helped, but… I was Plutt’s, so…”

“So they left you, mostly, alone.”

“You wouldn’t pick up another man’s tools, right?”

Kylo shrugs. “That’s… never really been a thing for me. Either everything I’ve needed is nearby, or it’s been communally owned, so it’s not like there’s any sense of trespass from grabbing whatever was nearby.”

“Oh.”

He shifts the water a little, and is pleased to see that he can reach out with his Force and get the shower head to move without having to practically kill himself focusing on it, so the water is getting Rey’s hair. When it’s done, he kisses the top of her head. “I think the important thing is, you aren’t a _tool._ You can’t just… own people.”

“And yet, trillions of them do.”

He pulls her closer to him. “We’re working on it.”

A moment after that, she makes a small snerking noise. “Well, so much for that.”

“So much for what?”

“My plan of just _one,_ good, easy day. Nothing sad, nothing…” She shakes her head a little.

He holds onto her, and her arms wrap around his waist. “What would make today good?”

“I think I’d really rather not be dwelling on Jakku.”

He nods, his chin against her forehead. “I still need a shave.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

It really _really_ shouldn’t feel this good. Her hands, the blade, the slight scrape of it cutting through the hair. It should just feel, at most, pleasant. Like getting his hair washed. It should be relaxing and nice, and… pleasant.

But this is a _lot_ more than _pleasant._

Granted, she’s naked and standing between his legs, and he can feel her thighs against his, and feel the heat of both of their bodies, and the steam of the water, and… It’s a _lot_ better than pleasant.

He, absently, supposes that maybe he can’t blame that twit for getting a stand from Rey smacking him. After all, he’s sitting here, filling out and lifting up, as she runs a blade over his face, so…

“I’m intentionally being gentle and sensual, and trying to make this feel good. I was _not_ trying to make him feel good.”

He doesn’t speak because she’s got a knife to his upper lip. He does think. _I know, but… The danger is certainly part of it. There’s probably a certain kind of man who really enjoys having a beautiful woman hold his life in her hands, okay?_

Her eyebrows raise at that. “Really?”

 _Yeah. I probably like this a_ lot _more than I should._ It sort of purrs through him as she tilts his head up and swipes the blade slowly over his throat. He doesn’t shiver or wriggle at the feel of it, because he _really_ shouldn’t move. He wants to, though.

His shaft nudges her leg as it lifts a bit more.

“Huh…” She’s contemplating him. “So, this…” She gently slides the blade down his throat again, and uses her Force to, very gently, trail down his shaft.

 

 

She can feel the way he _almost_ jumps when she does it. He keeps his position still, but every muscle in his body tenses as his eyes go wide. _REY_ sort of whimpers, a mix of sexual urgency and alarm through his mind.

“No?” She steps back, and he sighs, slumping a little.

“I loved that. It felt absolutely exquisite. And please, don’t do it again. I’m not sure how well I’ll do at staying as still as I need to for that.”

He sees her think about it, and tuck that away to play with later. “Okay.” She hits him with an image, a future play date, where he’s feeling healed, in control, and she’s trailing the blade over his throat as she sinks her body onto his, saying, “That’s it, you’re doing so well, baby, just stay still for me, love.”

He groans, _loud_ at the image of that, and his head thuds against the back of his shower, baring his throat to her, more or less begging for her to do it to him, while knowing that _now_ isn’t the time for it.

She steps near again, kissing the tip of his nose, which isn’t slick with shave gel. “Just shaving.”

“For now.”

She grins at him. “For now.”

 

 

* * *

After… after warm water, and warm touches, a blade on his skin, and Rey’s hands following, and lips, and hot touches, and… all of it.

After, toweling off his hair, as she’s putting hers up in a ponytail, he looks like Kylo again.

Thinner than he should be, but… That’s _his_ face. No shades of Ben.

“I might decide to stop zapping my face if you want to do this regularly.”

She finishes up with the ponytail, and kisses his lips, nuzzling his chin. “Replace as many of the bad memories with good ones?”

He drops to his knees, holds her close, gently rubbing his very smooth face against her chest and breast. “That’s the idea.”

 

 

* * *

“Oh, come here, my love…”

Rey’s eyebrow raises as she watches Kylo _pet_ his coffee mug.

He grins at her, and takes a long, deep sip. He usually drinks his black, but today it’s rich with milk and sugar, partially to get more calories into him, and partially to just ease back into it.

She rolls her eyes a little, and takes a sip of hers, while spooning a little of her scrambled egg onto her toast.

“Is finishing up last night’s conversation part of ‘the good day?’” Kylo asks as he’s contemplating what he wants to eat first. He’s got toast and eggs and fruit, and there’s some sort of spiced porridge, and… So many flavors and textures, and he doesn’t know what he wants in his mouth first.

“Will it bother you if I want to kick it a bit further down the line?”

He picks the fruit. “Only to the extent that it seems to bother you.”

She shakes her head. “Just… processing. There’s something big there, and I’m not quite… there… yet.”

He nods. “You mind if I talk to Jon or Poe about it?”

“No.” It’s clear she’s thinking about something, and he’s very much not poking it, so it’s a bit of a surprise to him when she says, “Do you pray?”

“Uh…” He blinks at that. “Rarely. A little, these last few months, but… Not… Like I used to.”

She nods at that. He can feel her tucking that away.

“Do you… want to talk about that?”

“Not right this second.”

He nods at that, too. “It really was a hell of a week, wasn’t it?”

That gets a tight smile out of Rey. “Yeah.”

 

 

* * *

“C8, can you—“ Kylo hears the door slide open, and Jon’s there. “Or he can just magically appear.”

“You’re vertical!”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “For the moment. I’m probably going to get a nap this afternoon.”

Jon’s watching him carefully, clearly not missing the lost weight, his skin pale, or the general ‘I’m not up to full strength’ vibe. “You look like you could use it.” He sits next to Kylo at the conference table.

Kylo’s eyeing him, Jon up and hale and hearty, getting a feel for Jon’s light. “You don’t get sick, do you?”

Jon inclines his head a bit. “I certainly told Rey that.”

Kylo raises an eyebrow at him.

“Assuming I’m not being abysmally stupid, no, I don’t get sick.”

“Like… what, going into a plague zone? Rey can do that, and you’ve got a lot of the same feel as she does on this.”

“More or less...” _Fucking Luke Skywalker._

“Uh… I’m… not trying to read your thoughts, but that one was really loud. And while that’s a sentiment I’m unlikely to challenge you on, I also have no idea why you thought it.”

“He’s the one who sat you down and did the sex talk, right? Or should I be thinking _fucking Han Solo?_ No, I already know the answer to that. He’d had to have known better.”

Kylo nods. “It was Luke.” It’s also clear from the look on his face that Kylo cannot figure out why he’s linking getting sick to sex.

Jon sighs a bit, and nods to C8 as a cup of tea, the way he likes it, is placed in front of him. “Thank you.”

C8 nods at that.

“Do you record these conversations?” Jon asks the droid.

“Unless expressly directed not to, of course. If the Master wants a reminder of what’s been discussed, or a transcript, that’s the only way for me to be able to retrieve one.”

“Okay, stop recording. I’ll let you know when to continue,” Jon says. The biggest problem with C8 being black in a black room is that if his eyes aren’t glowing it’s easy to forget he’s in there. That’s not an issue now, so Jon’s feeling a bit uncomfortable with him just hovering there in the background.

Kylo’s blinking. “That’s how you do that?”

“How else could I do that?”

“Can anyone else get those recordings?” Kylo’s suddenly thinking of all the conversations he’s had within C8’s hearing.

“They’re coded to your voice, and now Lady Ren’s. Anyone else attempting to get them through slicing or faking your voice will trigger a full scale deletion.”

“Oh. Okay. Uh… For future reference, any conversations about Luke Skywalker do not need to be recorded.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were saying,” Kylo looks to Jon.

“Okay.” He glares a little at the stars passing them by. If Kylo’s clueless on sex and getting sick… How much more of this didn’t he get? “Uh…” Another _fucking Luke Skywalker_ thought dances through his head. “Uh… You and Rey don’t have kids.”

“Astute observation.”

“Intentionally?”

“You want to know if I know what a preventative is. Yes. I do.”

Jon’s feeling rather doubtful on that. “Uh huh. What do they prevent, Kylo?”

“Babies…” He’s looking at Jon like he’s being appallingly stupid right now.

“Among other things.”

Kylo blinks.

 

 

“Yep. That, right there. That blink. And the way you’re staring at me like you just noticed a gaping hole in the floor at your feet. That’s the _Fucking Luke Skywalker_ moment. A slick’ll keep you from making any babies you don’t want _and_ make sure you don’t catch any of a long and wide variety of social diseases.”

“Oh.” Kylo blinks again. “Abysmally stupid.”

Jon nods. “ _Going into a plague zone.”_

Kylo startles a bit. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I… know better. I’ve known better for a _long_ time. But… It feels better without, and… I’m not supposed to need them, you know? I’m supposed to be fluid bonded, and uh… monogamous… and uh… Especially from the back, he looked enough like Lane, and smelled enough like him, too, and… Well, eyes closed… I could pretend.

“And I knew it was stupid, I _knew_ it was going to bite me, and I did it anyway, and I wasn’t even drunk enough to blame it on that. But, besides moments where I act like a flaming idiot, I don’t get sick.”

Kylo nods slowly, and then another thought hits. “Uh… Are you… okay?”

Jon waves that off. “Yeah, saw the med droids the next day. Maybe that’s part of ‘feeling like Rey.’ I knew I’d caught something, so I went to get it taken care of. Got an update on all of my anti-virals, and a pile of antis. In men, that one’s more or less asymptomatic. You don’t know you’ve got it unless a screening goes positive, or, three decades later, you get cancer in a place you _really_ don’t want it. But if you pass it on to a woman, it’ll fuck her up something fierce.”

Kylo nods again, chewing on his lip, feeling cold all over. “So… there are… a lot of these?”

“Dozens and dozens.”

“And some of them don’t have symptoms?”

“Yeah. They’ll just lurk in the background until they jump up and bite you, or someone you give it to, something fierce.”

Kylo’s rubbing his forehead, starting to beg the Force that he didn't pass something on to Rey.

“Kylo…”

“When Snoke was around… I saw the Specs a few times. They always put a slick on me, and I wasn’t about to ask why.” Mostly because, since most of what they were doing was oral sex, he just assumed they didn’t want to actually _touch_ him. “After that, but before Rey… I mean… There were a few officers who… Back then, I didn’t exactly mind if all they wanted was my power if I got a good spurt from it. If it was the sort of thing that could make a kid, I’d use one, but… I just didn’t know.”

“Sir,” C8’s voice is mild. “When Rey brought you here and told me you needed medical attention, the med droid scanned you for _everything._ If anything other than Hiffa had shown up, you’d know by now.”

Kylo sighs with relief.

“Also, fewer of them get passed around through oral, and if you’re the guy half of it, even fewer of them, and on the receiving side, fewer yet. There are some advantages to having a shaft. That said, they’re supposed to check for all of that in your yearly physical, too,” Jon adds.

This time, when he’s met with a confused look on Kylo’s face, he says, _“Fucking Snoke._ If you’re an Order soldier, every year, you’ve got to visit the MedBay, and they poke and prod you, make sure you’re healthy and fit for duty, and update all of the drugs and whatnot you’re supposed to be on. You didn’t do that?”

Kylo shrugs. “Might not have been necessary to make a separate trip. I was in there every few months for broken bones, stitches, concussions, burns…”

Jon’s nodding. “Oh. Yeah. Probably not. But it’s been more than a year now, right?”

“More than a year, or maybe two days, depends on how you want to look at it. Before last week, it was… Maybe…” He’s looking at his hands, remembering hitting the walls in his office so hard he broke them when he was screaming because Rey had been in his arms, warm and close and naked, and then she wasn’t. “Sixteen months? Eighteen? A while.”

“Okay. Well, uh, yeah. Every year.” He thinks about it for a moment. “I know Rey’s got all the light Force stuff, but…”

Kylo inclines his head. “Yeah. I’ll mention it to her.” He’s already starting to feel ready for that nap, and a quick check of the chrono tells him he’s been up for two hours. “Okay, before I fall asleep, business.” He glances to C8 and waves him closer. “What happened with the two of you? Rey didn’t exactly say, but…”

C8 explains his side, while Jon leans back in his chair and sips his tea. Kylo listens, nods, and then says, to Jon, “I am really, truly sorry about that. I…”

“Didn’t think you needed to explicitly give the order,” Jon’s saying, nodding along. “Speaking of which, resume recording, C8.”

The droid nods.

“And yes, we figured that out. Rey made sure I was covered.”

“Okay.” Kylo turns to C8. “And, you got Rey an ID and set her up as a Citizen of the Order and…”

“I gave her access equal to yours, Master.”

Jon looks shocked at that.

“Okay, good. Does Jon have that level of access?”

“No.”

“Kinear and Schiff?”

“No.”

“All right. As of right now, I want Jon to have the same level of access that I do. If he and Rey decide that I am not fit to rule, bump Kinear and Schiff up to that level, while I’m out of it.”

“Noted,” C8 replies.

“Good.”

“Kylo,” Jon says, voice nervous.

“Look, I know Kinear and Schiff are very good at what they do. More than that, I respect them. And I trust them, to be themselves, which isn’t the same thing as I trust them to be good for me. I do trust _you_ to be good for me.”

“I… thank you.”

“I should have done that earlier. Okay, now tell me how many assholes I need to kill.”

Jon slumps into his chair. He sighs. “I was sort of hoping that that bit might have flown past you.”

Kylo just stares at him. “Rey hasn’t given me the blow by blow details, yet, and I’m doing my best not to press or demand the holos.”

Jon sighs again, and then says, “They’re an honor culture, and a patriarchy, so if you request K’Oanan show up so you can shove a saber through his balls or whatever, they’ll deliver him, and likely hold him in place for you if you request it. Though it will greatly reduce the chances of them renewing the contract with us in ten years. Now, K’Ahuana was more or less behaved, until the end, and--“

Kylo’s just staring at him, horrified. “I didn’t… I mean… Yes, I want to, but… They’d really just deliver him?”

“Yes. Again, they might quibble if you asked for K’Ahuana as well. But, as codified in their laws and their culture, if you go to their palace and hunt down the boys, they will not complain.”

There’s a second where Kylo’s thinking about how wildly satisfying that would be.

And there’s a second where he’s feeling how sad Rey was at the idea of _everyone_ on Niima being dead.

Then he sighs.

“I don’t really want to do it.”

Jon raises an eyebrow at him. And he understands that means, _Don’t lie to me._

“Fine. Rey would really appreciate me not doing it, so I didn’t intend to actually do it.”

“Oh.” Jon pauses. “Good?” He pauses again. “You’re saying no, but you look serious about doing it.”

“I’m serious in the sense that it’s a currently ongoing fantasy that I’m enjoying immensely, but if I indulge in it too much, it annoys Rey, but… They really wouldn’t be bothered?”

“I mean… Personally, yes, I assume his family would prefer you didn’t murder him.” He makes a dismissive noise. “Murder is the wrong word. You can’t murder someone if it’s not illegal, and what you want to do would be completely allowable in their culture. Politically, if you want to, you’ve got every right to take him out. That’s how they play the game there, and… honestly, it would likely win you some more status points, though that I’m a little less sure of.”

Kylo raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t have to say explain more.

“You’re the man who has a woman who can drop both of their princes. They’ve been learning to fight since they started walking. If even your _lady_ can do that, what the fuck can you do? It’s possible you’ve already got all the status points, so…”

“Ah…” Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. “I take it you guys didn’t mention she can and has dropped me, too?”

Jon’s voice is dry as he says, “Yeah, somehow _that_ didn’t manage to come up.”

Kylo snerks a little. He sighs again. “I’ve got Rey’s sense of it. And my own reaction to how it felt to her, but… That might be _touchy_ for us. How far out of line was this guy?”

Jon exhales. He knows this isn’t as _touchy_ for him as it is for Kylo, but he certainly didn’t enjoy watching it. “Again, K’Ahuana is a different story, but for K’Oanan, literally no one in his culture will blink if you castrate him and stuff his balls down his throat to choke on them. And, honestly, most of the men around here who saw it, won’t, either. He fucking stood there and _licked_ Rey. And then there was the fight.” Jon rubs his eyes. “I thought… At first… He was maybe just being… twenty-two. Something of a hypersexual jerk. Then we got to the fight. The only reason I didn’t shoot his ass is I didn’t have a blaster, and I had the feeling that it was important for Rey to handle it. I’m certain Poe would tell you the same thing.”

“So, it was more than, she just didn’t like it?”

“I thought the guy was dangerous. Rey thought he was, too. So did Poe. Take that for what it’s worth. What I don’t know is if he was the kind of guy who doesn’t know how to handle being told no, so he turned mean in the moment, because he was horribly embarrassed and angry, or if he’s an actual sociopath. I was the only one who only observed him. I didn’t personally interact with him.”

Kylo thinks about that for a moment. If Rey _and_ Poe thought this guy was dangerous, that likely means he is. “Do I want to see the footage?”

“Given what you know now, how much of a struggle is not killing this guy?”

“Sort of like an itch I can’t quite reach. It’s not unbearable, but I don’t like it.”

“And… uh… how bad is not knowing, exactly, what happened?”

“I’m not loving that, either.”

“So, I’m not going to say you can’t see the footage, or read the reports, or whatever, but… You might find it a lot easier not to.”

Kylo nods. “How about this, how badly did Rey damage him?”

That gets a wide grin off of Jon. “Three cracked ribs, a lot of bone bruises, and she shattered his wrist. Every bone in it was shards after that hit. He left here with his right hand and forearm in a suspension cage in a bacta tube.”

That gets a smile out of Kylo.

Jon glances to C8. “Stop recording.”

Kylo raises an eyebrow.

“The man’s a righty, and she took out his right wrist. I don’t know how much company he’s got at home, but if it’s not a lot, he’s in no position to do for himself, likely for a few weeks, given how badly she fucked over his wrist.”

Kylo does laugh at that.

When he’s done, C8 says, “Should I just not record whenever you two start talking about sex?”

“Good plan,” Kylo replies.

Jon nods. “Uh… sex, personal stuff, non-Order related business…”

“Would it be easier if, when it’s just the two of you, that I keep conversations in short term storage, while you’re having them, and set up a blanket do-not-record, and if you don’t tell me you want it permanent, I erase it after twenty-four hours?”

“That would make a lot of sense, C8,” Kylo says. “I have a feeling most of them don’t need to be kept forever.”

“Noted. In fact…” He heads toward the door. “I have a feeling that now would be a good time to go pick up more datapads.”

“That would be an excellent plan,” Jon replies.

“And maybe some lunch,” Kylo glances at Jon.

He shakes his head. “I’m going to have to get back to work soon.”

“Just for me. Okay, other than the fact that the one Prince was… an issue, how did it go?”

Jon grins. “Really well. Sneaking a warrior queen into your place was a little rocky at first, but once we got things going… Rey did great. The K’Aar was very impressed with her. They approved our solution. We’ve gotten the first payment of 5%, and we’re getting people into play and ready to move out.

“I understand K’Ahuana will have a coronation in the next six months. You and Rey will very likely be invited to that, and if so, I’d certainly suggest attending. Likewise, Rey has offered that if you two ever get around to a wedding, that you will be inviting them, as well.”

A small, very dark smile spreads across Kylo’s face. “So, you’re saying, I’ll likely have a chance to _talk_ to K’Oanan.”

“Uh… Yes.”

“Good.”

“You’re going to literally scare the shit out of him, aren’t you?”

“And I’m going to enjoy it intensely.” That smile just gets wider and darker.

“Ah.”

“So, what else happened?”

Jon blinks. Well… If anyone currently on this ship will know… And… rather than re-reading the damn note for the seventh time, maybe it’d be good to just make sure he actually _knows_ what he thinks he knows. Jon nods, and then pauses, and then decides he might as well just do it. “Tell me about Poe.”

Kylo blinks. He wasn’t expecting that shift of conversation. He’d been expecting more about… treaties or something. He also doesn’t know what Jon wants to know. Jon appears to be under the impression that he’s said something common and extremely telling, but Kylo’s just staring. Finally he says, “Tell you _what_ about Poe? Didn’t you spend like three days with him?”

Jon sighs. This time when he thinks _fucking Luke Skywalker_ it’s a lot quieter. “Which would be why I’m asking. Is he ‘verse or narrow, and if he’s narrow, narrow for what?”

Kylo blinks again. It’s abundantly clear that _Jon_ knows what he’s talking about. From the feel of it and context it’s some sort of sex question, but… He’s got no clue. _More fucking Luke Skywalker._

Jon slumps. It’s clear that Kylo’s bewildered, but he’s reading the bewilderment as Kylo just doesn’t know the answer to the question, as opposed to he doesn’t know what the question means.

Fortunately, Kylo can feel why Jon’s slumping, so he says, “Uh… I know it’s a sex question, because I can feel it off you, but… I don’t know what you’re asking.”

Jon unslumps and rolls his eyes. “If I ever meet Luke Skywalker, I’m smacking him upside the back of the head.”

Kylo grins at that mental image. “Luke would likely duck. He’s good at that. Plus, he’s dead, so if he didn’t, your hand would go straight through. But I’d enjoy watching you try.”

Jon rubs his forehead. “Fucking Luke Skywalker.”

Kylo nods.

“’Verse, narrow… means nothing to you?”

“A small chunk of poetry and not wide, that’s obviously not what you’re asking me, though.”

“Well, that’s pretty much where I was when my mom got done talking to me. Brent did a lot better.”

“Brent?”

“Tasha’s husband. I was four when they got married, so he’s halfway between my big brother and step-dad.”

Kylo fits that into his mental picture of Jon’s life and then says, “And unlike your Mom, he’s in possession of all of the equipment and is a bit more familiar with how having it works?”

“Yeah. Plus he’d apparently decided sometime around his and my sister’s third anniversary that there was no shot in hell of turning me into a proper, upright paragon of Imperial virtue, so he wasn’t trying to do that with said chat. Like he said when I was fourteen, ‘Look, I’ve known you since you were two, figured out you were something of a floof by the time you were seven, so let’s just chuck what your Mum had to say and start fresh…’ Anyway,” Jon sighs. “Luke apparently left this out: ‘Verse, as in diverse, as in your sexual interests are _diverse._ You like men and women, you like other species, you like--”

“I’m grasping the concept.”

“Narrow. You only like one thing.”

Kylo nods. “Makes sense. Uh… Luke… He told me a lot about how wanting things was a problem, and the most basic, mechanical, up, in-out, and done description of how sex worked on a physical level, a bit about how it wasn’t forbidden, but one needed complete mastery and devotion to the light to be able to indulge without tempting the dark, and nothing on the idea that not everyone wants the same thing, or that there are options.”

“Ah.” Jon looks mildly disgusted. “That’s pretty similar to how my mom told it, too.”

“Yeah, but your mom was trying to shape you. I’m honestly not sure if Luke knew there were options. Actually, looking back on it, I kind of think Luke may have been asexual. That or he was off the charts good at shielding. Fifteen years with him, and I’m _good_ at feeling what’s around me, especially if I spend most of my waking hours with the person, and not so much as a single stray thought. If he was ever thinking about sex, it was _hidden._ ”

Jon contemplates that. His lips purse, because now he’s wondering how many of his own stray thoughts Kylo might have caught. Then he rapidly decides that if Kylo’s caught them, he’s done a good job of pretending he didn’t, and he’s not about to tip over that perfectly balanced upside down pyramid.

Kylo, who had gotten a sense of what’s going on in Jon’s head, decides to continue not tipping over the upside down pyramid, and says, “Would that be narrow?”

“That’s an entirely different scale.”

Kylo’s look indicates _tell me more._  

“All or none.”

“And all would be those first couple years after your shaft wakes up and it wants everything all the time and the damn thing never goes soft?”

“Pretty much.”

Kylo decides that also makes a lot of sense to him, and that it’s probably time to answer Jon’s question. “I don’t know if Poe is narrow or ‘verse or… whatever. We haven’t talked about this. He and Rey have, so I know he has sex with men, but I don’t know if it’s only men, occasionally men, or what.” Kylo pauses for a second. “Rey said it like, ‘You know Poe likes men,’ which, at the time, I didn’t, so... That’s what you want to know, right?”

Jon nods. He’s quiet for a moment, and the rush of excitement Kylo was expecting from Jon at hearing that doesn’t materialize.

Kylo raises an eyebrow. “I was expecting you to be more enthusiastic about that.”

Jon’s quiet for another moment. “I was, too.”

Kylo cocks his head, feeling, and thinking. “Are you… okay?”

“I really don’t know.”

 

 

Kylo really doesn’t know what to do with this. “Uh…”

Jon waves it away. “I know you’d like to help, but you don’t know how to do it, and I’m not sure what I need right now, either.”

“Okay. I… you feel confused and… almost disappointed… and confused about being disappointed, and--”

“Stop, okay?”

“Stopping. Just… sometimes it helps to say it, right?” He’s sure Jon said that to him, or at least thought it very clearly, once.

“Yeah, sometimes it does. However, it’s generally useful because it requires the person feeling the emotions sort them out and decide what they are. You banging about in my head and telling me what you think I’m feeling does not have that effect.”

“Oh.” Kylo looks at the floor. Then he reaches out and just holds Jon’s hand. Jon gives him a little squeeze, and a pat, and Kylo understands that as a _let go_ gesture, so he does. Kylo swallows. “If… you get to the point where you do want someone to listen to you talk…”

Jon nods. “I know how to reach you.” He looks at Kylo more carefully. “And you look ready for another nap.”

Kylo rolls his eyes but goes along with the subject change. “Eat first. This… I hate this.” He gestures to the piles of datapads. Just the idea of moving them feels exhausting. “This should not be _work._ ”

Jon nods. “You still want to do that film thing? See a bunch of Handsome Princes princing-about with their ladies? Seems like the kind of thing that’d be easy as a way to get back to being _Master Ren._ ”

Kylo thinks about that. “Just sit there and watch stories?”

“Eating snacks that are stupidly fattening is often part of it, too.”

Kylo inclines his head. “I’ve been told that’s a good plan, too.”

“It is.” It’s clear that Jon hasn’t missed how much weight Kylo’s lost. “We were planning on doing it for tomorrow anyway, so…”

“Yeah. Sure. Tomorrow.”

“Good.” Jon stands up. “Okay, I’m going to go meet with Threepio. We’re talking about moving the whole diplomacy branch down here.”

“Here?”

“Not, literally _here._ But XX, YY, ZZ.”

“That makes a lot of sense.”

“Yeah, get everything centralized.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

Lunch. That’s good. Nap, that’s good, too, though he’s annoyed that he needs one. Attempting to work out, that was… depressing, and he’s not going to say anything else about that, and then back to his desk for _more_ datapads.

“C8.”

“Sir?”

“Why the hell are there so many of them?”

“I’m assuming you mean on a level beyond, ‘You were sick for eleven days?’”

“Yes. Most of these have, what? Three files on them. I know I’ve got one that holds literally billions of files, so…” He’s holding the current one in his hands, and it looks identical to his main one, which holds entire libraries full of datapads worth of information.

“Security, sir. They could just send the files directly to your main pad. But by putting it on a clean pad, making sure only your fingermark-retina can open it, and having a droid directly walk it to me, there’s no way for anyone other than you to read it.”

Kylo looks at what has to be, literally, a thousand data pads on his conference table. “There’s got to be a better way.”

“Would you like me to put investigating that onto the to-do list?”

“Yeah. Rumor has it we employ slicers, get some of them on this. I don’t need a stack of datapads half as tall as I am piling up every single day.”

He glances at his next report, it’s on tax evasion techniques in their occupied territories. “And I really don’t need absolute top security for things like this. Send out a memo letting them know that unless people are going to literally die if whatever it is ends up in the wrong hands, they can just _send a copy_ to me.”

“Done, sir.”

 

 

* * *

He’s tired. And hungry. And pulling on an extra sweater, and his cowl, because right now, Kylo doesn’t care how cold home is, he wants to be there.

Bundled up, dinner in hand, he’s porting, and… home.

Alone right now. He gets a feel for Rey. Just like he’s going through his backlog, she and the rest of the Maji are going through theirs. Unfortunately, for them, the backlog is a billion kilos of snow.

For once, he’s not feeling any disappointment on being on the outside. _Not_ shoveling the snow that’s choking their street isn’t bothering him at all. (Though he does make a mental note to see if they’ve got any sort of device that does something like that, and then he’ll see if Poe’s willing to fetch it home, because he knows that no one on shoveling duty is enjoying it.)

He’s just turning on the cooker, when he feels Rey think, _How are we set for dinner for three?_

_Poe joining us?_

_That’s the plan._

He looks at the plates in his hands. _Small for three._

_There are cookies in the cooler._

_It’ll work, then._

_Good, and Poe’s going to bring something, too._

 

 

* * *

A few minutes later, after Kylo’s got supper on three plates instead of two, and settled in the cooker to stay warm, Rey and Poe appear in his living room.

He kisses Rey, hugs her for a moment, and can feel her think _Long day?_

_It shouldn’t have been, but…_

_You’re healing._

_Yeah, spiffy._ He nuzzles against her hair, and she holds him a little tighter.

He can hear Poe moving around, pulling out the plates, putting something on the table. And after a moment, he lets go of Rey, and says, “Hey, Poe.”

“Hey, back. I get you probably wanted a night just with Rey, so I won’t barge in, too much, just…”

“Just?” Rey asks.

“I want to borrow your man for some guy talk,” Poe says. “After dinner.”

Both Rey and Kylo look confused by this.

Poe snerks at them. “We’ll gossip, and I’ll braid his hair.”

Kylo knows he’s being teased, but he says, “No,” nonetheless.

Poe winks. “Nah, mostly I want to question him about Jon, but… I mean, if you want to stick around Rey, that’s fine, but he knows Jon better, and this one looks like he could do with some practice when it comes to friendly one-on-one social situations, so…”

Rey waves that off. “After dinner, go, have some guy talk.”

“And,” he opens a bottle of something, and pours it for the three of them, “during dinner, I figured he, and you, might like to hear about how much ass you kicked and how awesomely the Maji stepped up and took charge while Mr. Chosen One was flat on his ass with Hiffa.” Poe smiles a bit at that, and well, Kylo really wouldn’t mind hearing Poe’s version of how it went/looked.

 

 

* * *

“And thus, asses were kicked, hearts were broken, treaties signed, and according to Jon, in the next few days 400 million credits should be heading your way. It was, without a doubt, the most entertaining three days I’ve had in months, and possibly years,” Poe says as he’s rounding out their conversation as they tidy up after dinner.

Rey’s staring at him, on the verge of dropping the plate she’s putting back. “Four hundred million?”

“Yeah. It was a ten year, eight billion dollar contract, and that’s the first five percent. The rest get paid biannually, right?”

Kylo shrugs. “I don’t handle that part. Apparently, on this one, I didn’t handle anything, but… About the time the first draft of the contract got written up, I was out of it.”

Rey’s staring at both of them. “Eight billion credits? They put me in charge of an _eight billion credit…_ ” She’s very clearly going over every single moment of the entire three days and whimpering at every decision she made.

Poe squeezes her shoulder. After, that’s when the nerves set in. This is exactly how it works for him with a fight, too. “You did great, Rey. They liked what you gave them. I caught the K’Aar before they left in the morning, and he was _very_ pleased by the whole thing.”

“Including me breaking his grandson’s wrist?”

Poe smiles. “Especially that part. I got the sense that he’s under the impression that K’Oanan could have used a bit more telling 'No' in the past, and he’s grateful you told him 'No' without killing him. It’s clear he’s hoping that he can use that to shape a ‘valuable lesson’ and get that kid pointed right before he goes really wrong.”

Rey sighs. “Me, too.” She shakes her head. “Eight billion credits.” Her eyes are narrowed. “Jon told you that, and not me.”

“Well, I did _ask._ Did you?”

“No.”

“I don’t think he was keeping secrets. He was just _really_ stretched.”

“Oh.”

Poe looks to Kylo. “So, did she do you proud?”

It’s clear to Kylo that part of Poe being here, right now, and doing this, is to hammer home that he needs to do some serious praising and petting, because Rey was out on a ledge all by herself and she didn’t much like it.

Kylo realizes he didn’t specifically say it, either. He knows she felt how pleased he was, but that’s not the same thing.

He steps closer to her, cuddles her against his chest, his lips on her forehead. _You, really, absolutely, did. I love you. And I love that you did that. And I_ know _you did better with it than I could have. Thank you._ He kisses her forehead, and her lips. Then, without looking away from Rey, he says to Poe, “More proud than you can imagine, and more proud than I thought I was capable of feeling.”

“Good.” He puts the last plate away while they snuggle. “Okay, enough of that. Guy talk. Back at my place, because you don’t have anything real to drink here.”

Kylo lets go of Rey, kisses her one last time. She smirks a bit at him, and then raises a brow to Poe.

Poe looks up at Kylo. “Let’s get porting. Not having to walk in this cold is really convenient.”

Kylo rolls his eyes a bit. “I thought the idea of porting bothered you.”

“That was twenty-five degrees ago. Right now, I don’t want to freeze my nards off.” He extends his hand.

Kylo inclines his head a bit, Poe’s certainly not wrong about _that,_ and grabs Poe’s hand.

 

 

* * *

A heartbeat later, Poe opens the hatch to his ship, and a moment after that, they’re in his galley. “It’s too late for coffee, for me, unless I’m going to put some booze in it. So, what do you want?”

“What do you generally drink this late?” Kylo asks, sliding into one of the booths at Poe’s table.

“Tea or whiskey.”

“Tea.”

Poe nods and gets to it. He pours himself tea (hot this time) with a slug of whiskey in it, and the scoots in across from Kylo, setting the cups in front of them. “Do you drink alcohol? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do it. Your mom could really put it away, though.”

“Rarely. I don’t really like how it tastes. Sometimes it’s good in other things. And Jon’ll carefully measure some out for me if he wants me calmer than I’d otherwise be in a social situation.” He takes a sip of the tea. Again, it’s… fine. Coffee is better, but he knows why Poe doesn’t drink it this late, and he really doesn’t need that either.

Poe’s got his hands cupped around his mug, letting the heat of the drink seep into his hands. “You know, I wouldn’t mind the _Supremacy’s_ climate control right now. Micah’s rated to -550, but I swear I can feel the chill.”

“Warmer here than our place.” He’s actually thinking about taking the cowl off, because it is warmer in here than in their place.

“Because your place isn’t rated to -550.”

“It’s not that cold out there.”

“I know. I think it might be the sound of it. We can hear the wind and the storm.”

Kylo inclines his head and sips his tea. Friendly social situations, okay. He’s not sure how long they’re supposed to sit here and talk about the weather. The memory of Poe saying, ‘So who talks now?’ goes flashing through his head. “So, Jon…”

“Tell me about Jon.”

Kylo’s feeling pretty good about that, because _this_ time, he knows how to respond. “He’s ‘verse and likes you, a lot.”

Poe proceeds to rip the rug out from under Kylo’s feet. “I _know_ that. Everyone knows that. His fish know that. You do not need to be an accomplished reader of body language or Force sensitive to figure that out.”

Kylo glares at him. “Then what do you want to know?”

“How’s he doing?”

“Can’t you just comm him and ask. Or go visit? He’d probably like that.” Probably. Or maybe be confused by it. Either way, it wouldn’t involve Poe staring at Kylo looking for… something.

Poe sighs, again. “I’m not asking did he have a good day today. And I’m not asking if he wants to fuck me. I’d hope he had a good day, and I know he wants to fuck me. Bigger picture, _how is Jon?”_

Kylo blinks. “What the hell happened the last time the two of you got together? He’s asking me if you’re interested in men, and you want to know how he is.”

Poe smiles at that, pleased to see that Jon’s interest survived his hangover. “He got drunk. I didn’t. And when he metaphorically crawled into my lap, I gently removed him from it, and walked away.”

“Why would you do that?” Kylo’s stunned, and it’s clear to him now why Jon was asking if Poe actually likes men.

“I’m asking myself that every bloody day,” Poe mutters. Then, full voice, he says to Kylo, “Because I _don’t_ know how he is, and I… want this to work, so… What’s going on with him?”

Kylo’s staring at Poe, and Poe can feel him start to rummage through his head, trying to figure out what the hell he means by _how is Jon?_

“Stop that. _Ask_ for clarification.”

“I don’t know what you mean by _how is Jon._ It’s obvious there’s some specific information you’re looking for, but I don’t know what it is, and my first guesses were wrong.”

Poe sort of shrugs. “Is he okay? I mean… In general.”

“In general… I… Think so. I mean… Why are you asking? What’s got you thinking to ask this? Not because he wants to have sex with you, right?”

Poe snorts a laugh at that. “Not because he wants to have sex with me. My estimation of a person goes up when they want to have sex with me. Shows they’ve got good taste.”

Kylo snerks a bit at that. Then he just _looks_ at Poe.

“Because I want to have sex with him, and then sleep with him, and probably wake up with him, and maybe do the whole get breakfast thing, and then _keep doing it,_ and… If he’s who I think he may be, then maybe do it for the rest of our lives.”

Kylo sips his tea. “You know, this sounds like it’s got a really obvious answer that doesn’t involve talking _to me._ ”

Poe rolls his eyes. “Not everyone has a Force-ordained soulmate that the universe decided to drop in our laps, you know? Some of us have to actually plan this stuff out and work at it.”

Kylo takes another drink, and says, “Fine. I still don’t know what, exactly, it is you want to know.”

“Lane died.”

Kylo nods. “He told you about that?”

“He did.” He glares at Kylo. And then kicks him, not gently, but not with any real force, under the table. It’s clear he’s annoyed, and not really attacking, so Kylo doesn’t smack him back and into next week. “Oh, and speaking of things I shouldn’t have been walking into blind. You know what would have been nice to get a heads up on?” Kylo winces. “The only saving grace on that is that I’m not personally responsible for the man’s death.” Another sigh. And it’s clear that Poe’s thinking _but I could have been._ “But, even if he didn’t tell me, the man lives in the home they shared, is still wearing his marriage band, there are pictures up all over the place, and… _How is Jon?_ ”

Kylo nods. “In relation to Lane?”

“And everything else, too. He’s seeing people again, right?”

Kylo thinks for a moment. “Seeing is relationship-y things, not just fucking, right?”

_Fucking Luke._

“Okay, first of all, in my defense, you thought that very loudly. Second of all, as a general principal, yes, always. Third, were you and Jon talking about me with each other?”

That gets an amused look out of Poe. “Yes.”

“And about Luke?”

“About the things you should have been taught young, but weren’t.” Poe gets up, he holds up one finger, and heads to his room. A moment later, he’s back with a tube of… something, that he hands to Kylo. And Kylo’s just staring at it. “Rub a little of it under your arms after you get out of the shower. Get your stones too if you’re going to be doing something really hot and sweaty later that day. Just a dab on your fingertip, you don’t need too much.”

For a long moment Kylo’s just dumbfounded, staring at Poe like he’s gone beyond insane.

Poe shakes his head. “One of the things _Fucking Luke_ should have taught you, but didn’t. Like, yes, _seeing people,_ is code for relationship-y things, not just fucking. Can he have a decent conversation with someone, often involving meals, fuck them, then a good cuddle, and do it again, on a somewhat regular basis? Preferably without getting scared or feeling guilty about stabbing his memory of his husband in the back. Meanwhile,” he touches the tube, “This is one of them, too. Deodorant. Most adults, especially male ones, use it. It helps us not smell like death warmed over if we’re doing hot, sweaty things.”

Now Kylo’s staring at the tube. “It’s unscented.” By which he means he doesn’t understand how it can work, but that’s not how Poe understands his comment.

“Yeah. I prefer unscented. I still want to smell like me, or whatever cologne I might wear. I don’t want to smell like me working hard all day without deodorant.”

“Uh… Okay… Do I… normally smell okay?”

Poe shrugs. He leans a little closer to Kylo and sniffs. “Right now you’re fine. And, I’ve never really noticed, which is a good sign that you’re likely usually okay. A lot of guys you can smell from the other side of the room if they don’t use this. But, I never spend any time with you after a workout. And Jon noticed so…”

Kylo glares at the tube. “And this is… basic hygiene that pretty much everyone else in the galaxy knows?”

Poe inclines his head a bit, and then gets just about knocked back by the force of how Kylo thinks _Fucking Luke._

“Yeah. Okay. Back to Jon. I know he’s fucking. Is or has he been seeing anyone?”

Kylo thinks about every conversation he’s had with Jon. “Uh… I mean. I know he’s had the one friend, but… I think she’s actually a friend. If it’s more than that, I think it’s more of a hobby than a romance.”

Poe nods. “Lots of casual sex?”

“Maybe? I’m not sure what counts as a lot.”

“More than one new person a week?”

“I don’t keep track of him that closely. Would three in one party be a lot?” Kylo pauses as he feels the wave of shock crash off of Poe. “Don’t answer that. I can feel it coming off of you. I think he works really hard, and then parties just as hard.”

“Drinking a lot?”

“Again, I don’t have a good map of a lot. I know he drinks more than I do. I think he drinks more than you do.”

Poe sighs and looks at his cup of doctored tea. “If he’s drinking more than I do, that’s _a lot._ ”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Maybe. It can be. Any other drugs?”

Kylo almost shrugs, and then he remembers. “He’s mentioned using stims. I didn’t know he was doing that until he was so worked out he needed to crash in my bed.”

“That’s too much. Anything else? Self-destructive behavior?”

Kylo’s about to say no, but then he remembers Jon’s appallingly stupid comment. “Sex with strangers without a slick.”

Poe full-body cringes, writhing at the idea of that.

“It’s that bad?” Kylo had the idea it wasn’t smart, but… He’s getting a very strong PAIN response off of Poe.

“Sex without slick _hurts._ So, he’s either getting off on receiving or giving a _lot_ of pain.” That’s a layer of fucked up that Poe hadn’t even begun to think of, but maybe Jon meant that comment about smacking people. _Shit._

Kylo recoils at the feel of everything going through Poe right now. “Uh…” He knows they can’t be talking about the same thing. “I think it feels better without.”

“You fuck women. You don’t need slick. It’s built in for them.”

He rubs his forehead. “Okay, I know we’re not talking about the same thing.” He thinks for a moment and finds non-slang words. “Prophylactic sheath.”

Jon relaxes, fast, at that. “Oh... Rubbers. You call rubbers slick?”

“ _A_ slick, or slicks, yeah. At least in the First Order _._ Not like I knew any other slang for them before I got on the _Finalizer._ ”

Poe nods at that. “Lube. I’m talking about lube. And… uh… For men, sex without lube, that’s a _really_ bad sign. You can really rip a guy up if you don’t use lube, and it’s going to hurt you, too.”

That makes Kylo squirm uncomfortably. He knows that burn from one, well-oiled finger, with Rey. Trying it dry sounds _bad_ to him, too. “Sex without a sheath?”

“I mean, that’s not good, but it’s not the same level of not good. Sometimes that’s just drunk and stupid and horny.” Poe just looks at Kylo.

Kylo rolls his eyes. “Speaking of _fucking Luke_ until this afternoon, I didn’t know it was a requirement for anything besides preventing pregnancy, so…”

“Yeah, a lot of us have some variation on that theme. File it under young and stupid. That said, it’s one thing to decide ‘I want this to feel even better, fuck the consequence’ and it’s another to decide, ‘Hey, I’ll go away from this bleeding, likely end up with a nasty infection, and possibly have sphincter control issues after, or do that to someone else.’”

 _That’s_ a bit more graphic than Kylo was expecting, but he’s understanding that full-body cringe now. “Okay, yeah. Got it. Stupid and lonely, not damaging himself or someone else.” Though as he’s saying that, he’s less sure. _Plague zone._ But Poe’s already moving on.

“What’s he do on his off time?”

Kylo shrugs. “I… don’t know. I mean… We’re not swimming in off time, you know?”

“Look, even enlisted get eight off a cycle, and two days per ten fully off. That was true under Snoke. If Finn got that sort of off time, you guys have to have some, too.”

Kylo blinks and sighs. “Not that I’d ever noticed.”

“Great." It's clear that Poe's thinking  _what's the point of being the boss if you're never off,_ but he doesn't say it. "You’ve never seen him at a good time party, have you?”

“No.”

“Okay. Works too much when he’s on… Just forget I asked that. You’ve got no map for that, either.”

Kylo’s looking very deeply disturbed. “Poe, is Jon _okay?_ I… He’s not cutting himself or anyone else. He’s not picking fights so other people will hurt him. He doesn’t break things when he’s frustrated. He’s not… I don’t feel black and red pouring off of him. Sluggish blue-gray sometimes. There are no sharp edges or knives on him.”

Poe sighs, and rests a hand on Kylo's. “I forget that your map of okay is so far away from a normal person’s that you just can’t accurately judge. Yeah, I mean, all of that is possible for _not okay_ but that’s not what I’m thinking of for Jon.” He sighs. “Light side not okay.”

Kylo smirks, but it’s not a pleased or happy gesture. “Light siders are always _okay_.”

“Shit! You’re sarcastic sometimes.”

“Yeah, well, my map of okay starts at apparently the far edges of your map of not okay, so…”

“I know, buddy, I know.” He doesn’t think _fucking Luke_ quite so loudly this time. “And, to answer your question of why I removed Jon from my lap, it’s that… Shit. I _like_ him. In a way I haven’t liked anyone for a _long_ time. You can feel that off me, right?”

“Yes. It’s all warm pinks and golds, content and pleased. Eager.”

“Good. But… I’m at least attempting to learn from past mistakes.”

Kylo’s curious about that.

“I’m really good at falling for guys who aren’t good for me, or would be, if they suddenly decided to start sleeping with other men, but that’s just _not_ going to happen.”

A vivid image of Finn pops into Poe’s mind, and Kylo does his best to pretend he didn’t notice it. “Oh.”

“So, here’s this little ball of perfect wrapped in golden skin and hair, with big blue eyes, and fuck me lips, and for once, he appears to be a decent man _and_ likes fucking men. He’s the whole fucking package, okay? Except, you know, he’s still wearing his marriage band, and has all the pictures of his husband up, and…” Poe grits his teeth. “So, I want it to _work_ this time, which makes me think that I need him to be _okay_ before we can get this thing going.”

“Oh.”

“Because, I’m not ever going to be Lane, you know? And if he’s looking for a Substitute Lane, I’m gonna be a shitty one. I need him to be looking for a Genuine Poe.”

That makes a lot of sense to Kylo. He couldn’t be what Rey needed, not while she was still looking for Ben.

“And, I’ve got the feeling that maybe he’s not in deep mourning, not anymore, but he’s still in mourning, and he’s not _okay_ yet, and honestly, he’s not even wearing what most people would consider a particularly good okay-mask, and until he’s at least in the neighborhood of being able to see okay, I’ve got to sit on my hands and wait for him.”

Kylo sighs at that. He’s quiet for a moment. And then he says, “Rey left me. Twice. I wasn’t okay enough for her either of those times. Granted, they were less than a week apart, but… Really, the second one was the one that mattered. I’d killed Snoke, and turned to her, and begged her to rule the galaxy with me, and she more or less knocked me out and sprinted away, because not only was I not in the neighborhood of being able to see okay, I also couldn’t have located it with a map and a team of trained navigators.”

“Smart woman.”

“Yeah. Granted, I wanted to kill her and everyone else because of it, but…”

Poe nods at that, too. “Yeah. That’s pretty common. Hurts like fuck when someone you want rejects you.”

“So…”

Poe shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how to thread the needle of making sure he knows I’m interested in him and want to be with him, while also giving him enough room to grieve and get on an even keel.”

“Better you than me.” Kylo’s quiet for a moment after that, too. Then he says, “When he asked about you, and I told him that you liked men, he seemed… almost disappointed.”

“Could be a lot of reasons for that. Among others, thinking I’d just kicked him to the side.”

Kylo shakes his head. “It was internal to him.” He cocks his head. “Just… I guess I’m saying I think you’re on the right path by giving him more time.”

“Yeah. Why does the right path always suck?”

Kylo smirks at that. “Because the Light writes the rules, and we keep trying to shove ourselves into it, with… varying results.”

“Amen to that.” Poe’s turn to be quiet. “Jon’s light?”

“Is that not clear to you?”

“I can’t pick up on other people’s Force signatures. Wait… Is Jon Force sensitive?”

“His mom is, a little. He’s… just immensely good at reading people.”

“Yeah. And wildly attractive to them.”

“Probably.” Kylo’s shrug indicates that he’s aware of the fact that there are ideals of male beauty, and Jon’s got a lot of them. “He’s… deep and still. Calming. You feel that when you’re near him, right? He walks in the room and you feel… better?”

“Yeah. And he’s good with empathy and caring about people and… Light.”

“Light.”

Poe fiddles with his drink a bit. “Speaking of that… Finn… Dark, light? Where the hell is he on the scale?”

Kylo shrugs. “If he was a Force sensitive, I’d have a better feel for it. Rose is light. That’s really clear. Paige is, too. She’s just a cuddly bundle of bright, eager glowing.”

Poe raises an eyebrow at him. Then he says dryly, “Paige is a sweetheart, but, I think that’s more you wanting a kid of your own than a genuine read on her.” Granted, it’s possible that since he spent a good thirty-five hours with Paige and Chewie, where she was not having a great day (they brought her back to mommy and daddy with a new tooth) his view on the subject may be _skewed._

Kylo’s not on any level fussed by that. “I like being near her.”

“Good. Finn?”

“If you asked me to bet, I’d say fairly-well-balanced leaning dark, or just over the line dark, but I don’t actually know. Why?”

“You and Rey are dark and light. Jon and I are light and dark. Sometimes I wonder how far the Force is jerking us around, and if they’re also part of this balance idea.”

Kylo shrugs. “I personally believe there is no end to the amount of jerking people around the Force is willing to do, so sticking yet another dark/light mirror here wouldn’t shock me at all. Why?”

Poe fiddles with his mug. “Just thinking about it, I guess.”

Kylo nods. “Has Rey or Jon told you about the Handsome Prince and His Lady thing?”

Poe just stares at him, and then snorts a sharp laugh.

Kylo doesn't laugh back.

“Oh, fuck. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been told it might be a good way to… build an image to encourage other people to join us.”

Poe collapses against the seat’s backrest and just _laughs._ After a moment, where he can _feel_ the eye rolling aimed at him, he stops. “It’s not you… Not… just you. I mean some of that’s you, but… Shit, your Mom would die if she knew about this. She _hated_ being Princess Leia. She used it when she needed it, but, just the idea of it irked her.”

“Probably part of why she was willing to throw it away for me. Without mentioning it, let alone asking my opinion on the matter.”

Poe can feel the heat in that sentence. He holds up his hands in a peace gesture. “So, you’re not asking me about how to handsome prince, right?”

“No. Though… shit… If there’s a book or something, on basic how to not offend people just by existing…”

“Just look up male grooming in your library. There’ll be stuff. Or… I mean, I can’t imagine there isn’t somewhere you can get it done on your ship. I’m sure Jon knows where you can get a scrubbed end to end, buffed, shaved, waxed, and trimmed.”

It’s clear Kylo’s not only not entirely sure what Poe means by that, but he’s also not interested in diving in any deeper. “Good. Okay. No, I wasn’t asking for help or your opinion on the subject, what I was going to say, is that part of learning how this works and looks is that, tomorrow, with Jon and most of the kids, we’ll be watching some movies involving Handsome Princes ‘princing about’ as he put it, and if you wanted to come along, and maybe see for yourself how Jon is, and spend some time with him, we’re just going to be sitting around watching movies, so…”

Poe nods. “Any other day, I’d take you up on that, but I’ve actually got a lead on a new Force sensitive. There’s an acrobat on Gilieans VII, and I’m going to go see if she’s just really good with hiding the stand, has a mini-field generator, or if she genuinely can levitate.”

“Oh. Excellent.”

“Don’t get too excited. Gilieans VII is a backwater. The kind of place where less than one in a million people even know a field generator is a thing, so... A lot of the time I get a lead somewhere like this, it's just a con, where the conman has better tech than the locals know exists. I don’t even mention them ahead of time anymore, because most of them are scams, but… I’ve got tickets to her show, so that’s where I’ve got to be tomorrow. If you guys do movie day again, sure, that’d be fun.”

“If we do it again, I’ll give you a heads up. And, one day soon, I'm going to track down something that removes snow from streets. If you feel like fetching it home...”

Poe nods. “Thanks. Let me know when you've got that. I know R2's going to want a lift back soon, too. Get that all in one sweep.”

Kylo looks at his empty cup. “Are we… done?”

“Yeah, go back to your sweetie." It almost feels like Poe's done, but then he says, "And get her a nice present when you’re feeling up to wandering around more than twenty-five meters at a go. That was a fuck ton of responsibility that got dropped on her out of nowhere and she absolutely killed it, so bend the fuck over backwards to make her feel good about it, okay?”

Kylo nods, thinking about what he could possibly do to say thank you for that, and ports back to Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know a lot of you really liked bearded Kylo. I actually do, too, but at least for right now, he's going to stay clean shaven.
> 
> That said, I'm working on a shift in identity where he may, eventually, in the future start wearing a beard again, but it's probably at least a thousand pages off, and I'm not sure if I'll actually take him there. 
> 
> We'll see. ;)


	24. Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Guys,
> 
> So, traditionally, if you're playing by "the rules of good writing" each chapter is a complete chunk of plot. (Yes, you can end on a cliffhanger, but you're supposed to wrap up whatever got you to said cliffhanger in the chapter.)
> 
> Now, a complete chunk of plot may be one action. It may be one thing by A POV character (and then seen again from a different POV) whatnot. 
> 
> Anyway. I've got three chapters here, and one big lump of plot. I feel like I broke each one into it's own lump, but they're all interconnected. If something is rushed, glossed over, feels a bit off, doesn't quite seem... *finished,* there are two more chapters covering the same stuff from different POVs.
> 
> Also, unique to this one, we're picking up with Jon the morning after he got the note from Poe. So, we're moving back in time a bit. 
> 
> All right-y, housekeeping done, let's get on with the plot. :)

2/7/2

“Hey, Em,” Jon says.

After getting his head back on from reading Poe’s note seventy-tree times, trying to figure out what the hell Poe’s playing at, Jon decided he’s not going to figure it out just staring at it, so he’s back at work, and ready to deal with everything else in the Order, again.

“Boss,” Emily Fruman, or Colonel Fruman of Tactical Design and Personnel Equipment, looks up from the huge stack of datapads on her desk. They used to be his. The datapads at least. He’s still in his old desk and his old office. That’s got to change, though. Not only is he preventing her from using the space he’s got his stuff in, but because she’s right next door, he keeps not hiring new people to do the jobs he needs done.

Right now he needs a different sort of help, though. He nudges a few of the stacks over, and sets a hip on her desk.

 

 

She smiles up at him, “So, how’d it go?” Before he can start, she says, “And I appreciate that you found someone else to handle the set up for you.”

He nods. “Yeah, that’s part of how it went. I’ve told you about Poe, right?”

She looks like she cannot begin to believe that he might actually ask that. “Your pilot? Short, dark, and handsome? The narrow boy you were lamenting? Honey, you’ve told me a saga about Poe.”

He sighs. And nods. Of course he has. Granted, he’s _listened_ to more than a few sagas, too. After all, there’s a reason why Emily is where she is right now and that’s because she’s the only other member of the original Tactical Design who wasn’t on duty when the _Supremacy_ was cut in half.

They were friendly co-workers, and shared loss (her husband had been on-duty seventeen floors below and ended up just as dead as Jon’s), mourning, a need to find something to fill the hours (rebuilding Tactical Design certainly took care of that), and the need for comfort (they could comfort each other), turned them into friends.

“Well, I’ve got a few new chapters to add to it. You got time?”

She looks at the piles of pads. “Eh…” She glances to the chrono. “You got like… two hours’ worth of a project?”

He nods. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Okay, two hours, then off to the F-deck for lunch, and you can tell me all about it.”

“Good. You mind if I send you something to read?”

“When have I ever minded?” She looks at the million datapads, many of which had been, once upon a time, his, and he would, without a second thought, toss on her desk if he needed another pair of eyes on them.

“This isn’t work. He wrote me a note.”

“A _note?_ ”

“Yeah.”

She grins at him. “Oh, this is getting better by the second. Sure, send the note.”

 

 

* * *

Two hours later, they’re just another two officers walking the F-Deck, both with a drink in hand, looking for a noodle cart without too much of a line. Jon’s finishing up everything he remembers about working with Poe, his stint as Commander Dameron of the Maji, as much of the flirty stuff he could recall, and then Poe more or less sprinting out.

“And then, in the morning, your virtue unsullied—“ Emily says as Jon gets to the end of his tale.

Jon glares. “I was damn well trying to get it sullied.”

Emily snerks and then sips her drink. “You wake up, and find that note, and a droid with a hangover potion?”

“Yeah.”

“Good one?”

Jon shrugs. “Wasn’t really hung over. Stim crash, tired, a bit logy from the night before, but it’s not like my head was throbbing or I was puking.” He put the potion in his cooler. Figured he’d save it for a morning he needed it.

“How drunk were you?” Emily asks. She’s seen Jon on a tear before. She’s been on one with him, too. More than once. In the early days, just after the body count was confirmed, and they’d gotten the message that search and rescue operations were ending, when it was just the two of them and some droids… Well, who was going to say anything if they passed around a bottle at the end of a shift? Or, strictly speaking, before the shift ended. Or, if, really, shifts weren’t exactly a thing and they just sort of drifted from one thing that had to get done to the next, and got blitzed in between, and, occasionally, during.

After all, it’s not like there were any higher ranked officers breathing down their necks. It’s not like there were any higher ranked officers, period. Not in their command chain.

Not like there were underlings to gossip. Not at first.

Say what you like about droids, but they don’t care if you’re working on specs for streamlining your production lines because you’ve lost half your forces in the last month and a half while killing your third bottle of vodka that week.

“Glass of wine at his place. An hour plus trip back to here. Three shots, fast, and that was it. I was nice and loose, but I wouldn’t say I was drunk.”

Emily shrugs. “Would he have said you were drunk?”

Jon shrugs. He doesn’t think so. He knows that Poe knows his way around a bottle, too. Both of them had multiple drinks at Kylo and Rey’s. But… Well, not like the two of them had gone drinking before, and Poe did watch him put three away in less than half an hour.

Emily shoots him a bit of side-eye. “Uh… You know some guys won’t fuck you if you’re drunk.”

That stops Jon short. “Huh?”

She nods at him, and nudges him so he starts walking again, the F-Deck isn’t too swamped right now, but they are in one of the thoroughfares, so keeping moving is important if they don’t want to get trampled. “Seriously. That’s a thing. Like, maybe you can’t really consent if you’re drunk.”

Jon’s eyes roll so hard they’re about to pop out of his head. “Oh… Holy fuck! I am an adult. If I want to get out of my head and get my rocks off, I can get out of my head and get my rocks off. I’m not some nervous virgin who doesn’t know what he wants or needs.”

Emily certainly isn’t in any mood to challenge that. Not like she hasn’t gotten out of her head and rocks off before. Not like the two of them haven’t done that together, either. “Look, I’m just saying, some guys won’t fuck you if you’re drunk. How much did he have to drink?”

“Fuck.” Jon mouths it that time. “Half a glass of wine. We were talking about relaxing, and I asked what he was doing, and he told me he’d watch my back if I wanted to get blasted.”

 

 

She wraps her arm around his waist and gives him a little squeeze. “Sounds like short, dark, and handsome is a gentleman, too. Noble enough to tuck you in with a kiss and _not_ take advantage.”

Exasperation rolls off of Jon. “You know, that’s not exactly an upside if I’m more or less lying in his lap, begging _take advantage of me, please!_ ”

Emily gets a little more serious. “Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you had sex sober, yet?”

He just looks at her, and she knows the answer. If he could have sex sober, the two of them might have moved from comfort sex to being genuine lovers. For about a year, they moved through grief at about the same pace, but Emily kept going, and Jon stalled out.

“Yeah. I thought so. Look, I don’t know what Poe’s story is, but he sounds like he’s at least attempting to be a decent human being to you, so…”

“Yeah… so…” He downs the last of his tea.

* * *

He fills the rest of his day with bits and pieces.

He doesn’t think about Poe.

Too much.

He doesn’t think about the wine in his glass as he eats supper, alone.

Too much.

* * *

2/8/2

“General.”

“Grand Marshall.”

He’s in his usual uniform. There are just a few more hexes on it now. But, of course, Threepio has his correct title. Though he’s wondering, since he’s specifically told him to call him Jon, if this is irony or something. It’s clear Threepio has a sense of humor, but Jon’s not sure he’s tracking all the nuances of it.

Threepio slowly turns in a circle. They’re on the YY deck, two floors above Kylo’s space. Right now it’s mostly empty. “Future home of the Order’s diplomatic wing?”

“That’s what I was thinking.” Right now it’s just a million square meters of mostly empty storage space.

“We’ll need to improve the look of ZZ. And install multiple elevators.”

Jon nods at that. “Wouldn’t do for _important guests_ to be flying into a landing bay that looks like empty, industrial blackness.”

Threepio nods. “Several landing lanes. Space to hold at least a hundred mid-class cruisers at once. I’m thinking some sort of central courtyard, where the elevators will be, plants and something garden-like if we can grow things here.”

That makes sense to Jon. Something like a garden is probably the fastest, and least expensive status symbol they can get on a ship like this. “I think that’s a possibility. And it would certainly indicate a level of wealth and comfort not generally found on space-going vessels.” After all, gardens in space aren’t cheap. But hopefully, they can use the planets they already control to bring plants in, so that should keep the costs down.

“Exactly.” Threepio’s seeing the same things Jon is. “Elevators go up to here. We can break this section off into a sixteen grid. Another wide central courtyard…”

Jon’s nodding, he can feel how this will work. “Our offices, and some sort of space for formal greeting of incoming bigwigs.”

“Exactly. And we’ll put the guest apartments one level up. We should have some sort of high end market on that floor, too.”

Jon can understand that. That’s the kind of market his mom wants her shop at. Something to show guests exactly how flush this ship is. Parks, boulevards, high end shopping, maybe a theater, the sort with actual, live actors, orchestra, something like that... “Embassies?”

“Realistically, for now, we have the room for them here. Hopefully, for the future, I-Deck.”

Jon thinks about that. “Start as you mean to go on.”

“Jon?”

“Something my mother would say. It’s easier to set patterns from the beginning than it is to move into them later.”

“That sounds accurate. Embassies on I-Deck then?”

“I think so. Direct elevators from here to there, express ones. And since we’re starting as we mean to go on, let’s make sure we’ve got real transportation hubs on I. I’d like to see some sort of shuttle that can get from one side to the other in under half an hour.”

“That should be doable.” Threepio is staring around the empty space. “Jon?”

“Yes.”

“Why does your mother know me?”

Jon blinks and turns to Threepio. “Uh…”

“It was abundantly clear, that when we met, she recognized me. I, unfortunately, cannot place where I know her, so…”

Jon shrugs. “I… How did she react to you? Was she angry?”

“No. Possibly irked, but not angry.”

“Well, there goes my best guess. She’s not, uh… What do you know about my father?”

“Major William Frakes of the Imperial QuarterMaster’s Brigade: Logistical Planning Division, his last command was maintaining adequate building supplies on the Second Death Star. He died there.”

“That’s pretty much what I know about him, too. But, as you can likely guess, Mom’s not a huge fan of the Rebellion in general or Leia Organa and Lando Calrissian in specific.”

Threepio nods. “Do you think she recognized me as a member of the New Republic?”

“If she’d refused to work with you, or was appallingly rude, yes, but…”

“She was, perhaps, curt. I don’t know how she usually acts with people.”

“You’d have known if she was being rude.”

“Ah.” It’s clear Threepio is thinking. Then he turns away from Jon, looking over the space. “I’ve already gotten the cost projections and building timeline set. In three months, the entire layout will be finished, and in six, we can move operations down here, by the end of the year, we should have everything ready for a grand, public opening.”

Jon nods.

“Jon, in my experience, many organics of our level will often have at least a small apartment attached to their office. I know Leia certainly did. It made the commute easier, and meant that if a night went long, there was a comfortable bed, a change of clothing, and a good refresher available. Would you like me to make sure there’s space for an apartment to go with your office?”

Jon’s immediate response is _over my dead body._ He doesn’t say it. His secondary response is a sense of despair. He _can’t_ move. That’s his home, with Lane, and if he… He shuts that line of thought down, fast. His third one, which is the one he gives voice to, is to say, “A small one. Maybe just a bedroom with a nice refresher. I do have an apartment I’m fond of, and have no desire to leave it. But, someplace near where I work to crash on late nights…” And he said it because he knows there will be late nights. A lot of them. He’s got a cot in his office now, because there are a lot of nights when the half hour commute between his office on R-Deck and his apartment on F-Deck just seems like too much.

It’s _rational_ to have a space here for sleeping. It makes _sense_ for his life to shift and move. It just feels _wrong._

“Of course, Jon.”

Jon does his best not to think about that, and then looks at Threepio. “What do you do when you aren’t working?”

It’s occurring to him, that he’s never heard a droid laugh before, but apparently, if you hit him with it _just_ right, you can make Threepio laugh.

“So, that was a flamingly stupid question, I take it?”

“I’m choosing to take it as a compliment. You’ve decided I’m so much a person, that I would desire off-time.”

“That’s… a good way to look at it.”

“I do, every ten or so days, take a few hours with my primary processing down to update my programming, scan for viruses or programs that shouldn’t be there, and have someone tend to my physical systems.”

“Sounds like R&R.”

“Possibly. I do often feel better after it. And like many droids of my sort of make and model, I do like a good dip in a hot oil bath. Makes the joints work better.”

“And you’ll make sure there’s a place for you to do all of that down here?”

“Of course, Jon.”

“Good.” Jon continues to look around. “Make sure there’s something like that for droids that come to visit us, too. I know you can’t be the only droid in this line of work.”

Threepio can’t smile, but Jon’s certain he’s pleased by that.

* * *

2/9/2

 

Two glasses. That’s what he used to do.

He and Lane would, most nights, have supper, together. Granted, some of those nights were just the two of them shooting down to F to grab an hour for a meal together before they’d go back to whatever it was they were working on.

But, most nights, they’d get home, and they’d have a glass of wine, or two, with food.

It was part of the line between work and not-work. Part of being _home._

Get home, take the uniform off. Dinner, talking, gentle touches and soft words, and a shared bottle of wine, and then maybe they’d read, or maybe work some more, sometimes watch a show, sometimes go out…

But that was the line, uniform off, dinner, and two glasses of wine. If it was ever more than that, it was because they were both off duty the next day, and they were going out, or staying in, and playing.

He’s had one glass. He pours the second one, and then looks around for something to seal the bottle. He doesn’t find anything, because, between the two of them, kicking a bottle with dinner wasn’t a big deal.

But by himself…

He pours it into a pitcher, and puts it back in the cooler. There’s not a lot in there. A few left overs, and several other bottles of wine, and one bottle of vodka in the freezer.

Jon rolls his lips together. He and Lane used to go through one a season.

He goes through one a month now.

It’s not, all things given, a problem. He knows men who had problems with alcohol. He doesn’t. He does his job, his life is moving forward, he’s just… sad. And sad is normal. It’s… fucking what he should be. So… It’s not a problem. It’s a rational response to the current situation.

It’s not a problem.

Yet.

But it could be one.

And the Grand Marshall can’t be a drunk.

Two a day. Unless he’s off duty, and celebrating.

That’s… tenable.

* * *

2/11/2

 

C8’s voice on his comm. “Grand Marshall, you asked me to let you know when the Master was back on his feet, and I have a feeling he’s going to up and about today.”

“Thanks, C8. You think he’ll be up to some company?”

“I think he would like to see you, sir.”

“Excellent. I’ll be down in an hour or so.”

 

 

* * *

Jon supposes, that if he thought about it, he’d have put together what he knows about the symptoms of Hiffa, and what that does to a human body, and the idea that Kylo would look like he’d been run over by a herd of Banthas.

He just… didn’t.

But, Kylo’s either distracted or tired enough that he doesn’t see Jon swallow, hard, looking at him, and by the time Kylo’s paying attention, he’s got the reaction covered.

Poor man looks like he lost ten kilos in a bit more than a week, and while that’s not the problem it would be for Jon if he lost ten kilos in a week, it certainly wasn’t _good_ for him.

Food and time. That’s the only fix for it. Lots of naps, too, likely.

 

 

* * *

Leaving Kylo to go back to his primary job, he’s thinking about what he learned about Poe from Kylo.

Poe likes men… Well… Not a surprise.

So, what the hell just happened?

Poe… doesn’t like him?

That just feels so _wrong._ Plus, you don’t write a note like that to someone you don’t like.

Poe’s cloaked?

Eh… his fantasies of Poe aside, he’s thinking that’s not true.

It’d be one thing if Poe were cloaked. But if Poe were cloaked, there’s no way Kylo would know he ‘likes men.’ That gets a sigh. That’s not strictly true. ‘Like’s men’ might have been the sort of thing Poe told Rey, thinking it would go nowhere else, and Rey told Kylo, knowing he didn’t have anyone else to tell, and then the landscape shifted.

But, even if he were cloaked… Jon shakes his head. Poe’s not cloaked. If he’s cloaked, he’s doing the worst fucking job of it ever.

Poe doesn’t like ‘verse guys? Shit… He went sprinting out more or less right after that. _That…_ could be it. Maybe. He knows some people think ‘verse means, ‘unable to settle down with one person’ but… He was married, happily, for years. Still would be if he could be.

He thinks about the note.

That note really didn’t feel like “Hey, I found out you sleep with women and men, so I’m about to run away.”

He’s almost tempted to turn around and try to get more information out of Kylo, but… No. With any luck he’s eating, and then getting a nap, and doing it again. The last thing he needs right now is Jon pestering him for more information about Poe.

 

 

* * *

Work. Work is good. Meet with Threepio again. Get films together. Make sure the cinema is up and ready for them. Watch shows tomorrow. That’s a good way to spend a day, get plans in place, move them closer to the Order of the Maji.

He checks his inbox, and the signed contract from the K’Aran dynasty is there. There’s a note showing the first of the payments have cleared. He’s got lists of troops they’re getting ready to move, and a time table for when the first of them should hit planet side. It's got all the right signatures in place, though he doesn't recognize the general in charge.

Then he gets the copy of the orders from Kinear highlighting who's been put in charge of overseeing the setup for the K'Aran Planetside Security contract, and why them, and what each of them will be doing. Jon adds his own initials to it, showing it's been seen and read, and then uploads it to their central filing system. All the blanks filled in.

At least from their end of things, the K'Aran situation is  _done..._ Well, planned out. It won't be done for ten years. Still... It's good.

There’s another note from Threepio. They’ve got another of these security deals germinating. The T'Quelleths and D'Muirs are attempting to set up a marriage to end a half century of war. They’re being requested to hold the talks and wedding. No mediating here, they’ll do that themselves. Their job is to put everyone up and secure the peace.

Jon smiles at that.

At least something is starting to move in their direction. He CCs the wedding specs, assuming a deal can be struck, to his Mom. After all, if they’re going to do something like this, and try to get others to come, they might as well exceed expectations by light years.

 

 

* * *

Dinner again. Alone, again.

“'A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and you…' That’s how the line goes, right?”

Lane would have known, but… Well, Jon’s not only lacking a loaf of bread, but he’s also lacking Lane, who he’s fairly sure had said something like that to him one afternoon when they were planet side and could contemplate something like a picnic. (They stayed in, and had a picnic in bed. That was a _good_ R&R break.)

He does have wine, so at least that corner’s covered.

And he should have a _you_ to share the wine with.

Jon glances around his flat. His empty flat. The flat where he’s sitting with his wine, a bowl of surikin noodles, a stack of datapads, and no _you._

He scoops a bit of the broth to his lips.

By all rights, having gotten the answer he was looking for from Kylo, Poe should be here, sitting next to him, likely with his own bowl of noodles and some of the wine, and he should be finding out if Poe’s good for more than just looking at.

Should be.

The bench next to him is still quite empty.

His comm is just sitting there. He could use it to call Poe. He’s got his link number, he knows how the device works. The man was flirting with him, and would be unlikely to turn him down… Hell, the fucker literally spelled it out and wrote it down for him, _I’d like to see you again._

Jon shakes his head. It’s got to be the sober thing, which… Okay, that’s fucking weird, but… He wouldn’t put it past the New Republic to be into things like that, so…

He could call.

He glances at the wine. It’s the other half of yesterday’s bottle.

Two glasses worth. Only two.

That’s… just taking the edge off for him. Not even in the neighborhood of drunk, so he can’t imagine Poe could possibly object to that. He takes another sip of his wine, and looks at what’s left in the pitcher.

Not enough.

He just… can’t… not on two glasses of wine.

 

 

* * *

2/12/2

Cinema-time.

However it is that Kylo and Rey’s transportation magic works, it either won’t transport twenty-four people in addition to them, or it’s got to be somewhere they’ve been before, or… something.

Instead of the two of them and a pile of kids popping up in the theater out of nowhere, Jon finds himself waiting around, at the front entrance, as the owner assures him that everything is ready, and the children are welcome to try any of the snacks they’d like, and… He’s blathering, nervous to have the Master, his Lady, and this collection of kids he’s fond of, in his cinema.

They’re later than he’d thought they’d be, but it might also mean that however they got here, it took longer to get here than expected.

Then he notices the crowd around him getting quiet, and a moment after that he catches sight of… An abnormally tall child… No, that’s a kid riding Kylo’s shoulders. From the looks of it, having an absolute blast doing so. (Kylo appears to be enjoying this, too.) Jon’s not the only one staring in amazement at that.

After a moment, Kylo, Rey, Rose, Paige, and this huge collection of kids are all crowded around, waiting.

Rey looks at the kids, gestures to Jon, and then says, “Kids, this is Master Jon. He’s a friend of ours.”

“Jon, this is…” And then Rey introduces the collection of “children” in front of him. Some of them are definitely kids. The littlest of the bunch is a baby, snuggled on Rose’s chest, and then the next littlest one, the one who had been on Kylo’s shoulders, is… he’s got no idea. Little. Younger than his youngest niece. Most of them look like they’re not quite adolescents. A clot of teenagers are toward the back, whispering to each other, looking around and joking.

And for the most part, introductions go fine. Jon’s good with names, and he’s good with people, and he makes each of the kids feel welcome and ready to have a good time. Like with his nieces and nephews, when needs be, he’s more than willing to get on his knees to get eye level with the kids. They tend to like it when people try to make eye contact with them, and offer to shake hands like they’re equals.

That pattern continues with the kids, until he gets to the last of the bunch, who he also assumes is the oldest of them.

For a heartbeat, Jon just stops and stares.

 _Fuck._ His brain freezes for a moment.

 

 

The first thing that hits is the Order uniform. He’s in the blue of the pilot corps, and the lack of any pips or stripes means he’s an Ensign-in-training.

The second thought is: He’s… young… too young… Too young for him… Now… Probably… Jon’s licking his lips, unconsciously. Wellll… Shit… He can’t be _that young_ if he’s an Ensign-in-training, right?

And he’s _staring_ at Jon. Light eyes and ginger hair, enough of a beard to be interesting to kiss. Long and lean and eager, Jon barely has to look down to make eye contact. The kid is practically vibrating with want, and oh... there’s something about taking a person who’s just past the cusp of adulthood and showing them how much fun their bodies can provide… A slew of happy memories from several weddings go cascading through Jon’s mind. And the kid, Jacen, he says his name is _Jacen_ , as he takes Jon’s hand in his, and suddenly Jon wants to hear himself gasp it as… Okay, he’s got to not think about that. Jacen holds his hand a bit too long in greeting, eyes on his, tracing down the line of his uniform, and… This kid’d be _so_ good to go.

Disapproval is radiating off of Kylo at this, slamming into Jon, derailing his fantasies.

Jacen just smirks at them.

A hot blush lights Jon’s face. He can feel Kylo wondering if this was a good idea, and Jacen’s still _staring_ and… adding a few images of his own to the flood of fantasies dancing in Jon’s mind, and, okay, his shaft is starting to take notice, and… Shit… Force user. He looks down, breaking eye contact. Little bastard probably watched his own happy memories and is now playing with them. Jon’s eyes narrow. He looks up again, straight into Jacen’s eyes, and says, “Stop it. You can try again in five years, when you’re on the other side of twenty and more than half my age.”

A few of the other teens giggle as Jacen smiles brilliantly at him, nibbles his lower lip, looks him up and down again, eyes lingering in places that make Jon feel hot and much, much too dressed before making eye contact, and saying, “I’ll mark my calendar, _Sir._ ”

Jon only mentally whimpers at that.

Jacen smirks at him again, making it clear he caught how much Jon liked being called, Sir, and then turns to join his friends, walking with a swing to his ass that should be illegal outside of the goodtime zone.

He intentionally does not turn to face Kylo, not yet, because he can still feel the wave of disapproval arcing off the man, though it appears to be aimed more at Jacen then him.

Jon’s not sure what to do about that.

 

 

* * *

Jon _thinks_ movies are going well. The kids appear to be having a good time. Or at least enjoying the food. He makes a mental note to increase whatever they paid the cinema owner by 10% because if there’s a single edible thing left in this cinema when they leave, he’ll be shocked.

He’s sitting next to Kylo, and can _feel_ him and Rey… communing or however they put it when they talk in their heads to each other.

Okay, maybe not _feel_ it. Maybe he just knows what sorts of stuff in these shows will likely poke them and get them, like they are right now, huddled in against each other, eating popcorn, watching the show, but also, obviously, _talking_ about something.

Part of him wants to say, “Okay, quit it. Talk out loud, to me, let me in.”

Part of him knows that it’s likely best to let them have this time to consider and ponder to themselves.

Part of him keeps looking at Jacen, three rows ahead, who occasionally looks back and sort of grins at him. He’s not sure if the kid’s lips actually move, but he certainly can feel that he’s beyond entertained by this.

Jon sighs, gently whacks Kylo’s wrist, and he hands over the popcorn he and Rey have been sharing.

__

* * *

Four movies was probably two more than was wise to try and shove into one day.

He can feel Kylo getting edgier next to him, and the little kids are running around, and… Yeah. He can and has and will again do kids, but this is significantly more fun for a day or two than a lifetime.

And movies brings talking with Kylo, which, of course, was the point of this.

Okay, Kylo was not thrilled about mentioning the deodorant thing to Poe, but… Well… Fine.

And he wants Jon to just go down the list of everything he apparently doesn’t know about being a person in the galaxy and…

So, he does. And…

It had not gone past Jon’s scanners that Kylo has some _issues._ He didn’t realize they were, on any level, attached to his physical body. Jon’s basic theory is that the only way you get to look like Kylo is if you’re deeply invested in how your body looks, but… apparently, no.

So, he was expecting to spend today convincing Rey that she was just as pretty as the ladies in the movies, and Kylo that, yes, he could handle social situations that involved him having to at least attempt to be charming and flirt.

So, of course, Kylo flips the script on him, and _he’s_ the one who’s having the body image crisis, and Rey’s just… off.

He doesn’t know what’s going on with her. Not too deeply, and she’s making it clear that she’ll talk when she wants to, or to whom she wants to. Which is not necessarily him.

He wonder, idly, how friendly she really is with Rose. They seem close. But… He’s got the feel that right now she could really use a good girlfriend to chat with.

Or maybe just… Oh… Yeah. He can feel the pieces falling into place. Rose doesn’t exactly love Kylo. And Rose’s husband, who has to be the Finn that Poe’s mentioned, _really_ doesn’t love Kylo, so if there’s anything going on with them that isn’t entirely perfect, she feels like she can’t talk to Rose about that, and… Probably part of not really opening up to him about it either.

(Though him sticking both feet in his mouth up to the ankle with that comment about K’Ahauna likely didn’t help matters.)

And none of that much matters. He’s sketching Kylo, because he’s sure Kylo’s got no idea of what he actually looks like, while he and Rey watch some of the New Republic propaganda vids, so both of them can get an idea of how exaggerated the good looks of Handsome Princes and Princesses get when they get turned into movies.

* * *

When the propaganda vids are done, Jon looks at Kylo and says, “Well…”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “All I’m going to say is, I’ve seen Luke Skywalker naked, and he did _not_ look like that.”

Jon laughs. “No eight pack on Skywalker.”

“ _I_ don’t have a bloody eight pack, even _now,_ I don’t have one, and I can promise you I’m the best in shape Skywalker to ever Skywalk.”

Jon’s laughing, hard. Rey is, too.

“Luke dragging us, and himself, to the middle of nowhere makes a hell of a lot more sense, now.”

“Good. I promise you, no one, in real life, looks like the people in the movies,” Jon says.

Kylo nods at that. Rey’s holding his hand. Jon crooks a finger at her. “C’mere.”

She moves around to his side of the conference table.

He flips over his sketchbook, but holds it so Kylo can’t see what’s on it. “Okay, before we show it to him, Rey, is this what Kylo looks like?”

She looks at the sketch and smiles. “Can I keep this?”

“Uh… Yeah, of course.” He rips the sheet of paper from the pad. “I’d have worked a bit harder on the shading if I knew you’d want to keep it.”

Rey waves that away. “No. Just like this. It’s a little rough and unfinished, but Kylo is, too, so… It’s… right.”

 

 

Jon realizes that Rey didn’t answer his question, and Kylo’s getting edgy about seeing the image. “Art style aside, does it look like him?”

“Oh… Yes. Black and white… Gray and white… But, yes, it’s a good likeness.”

Jon smiles. “Okay, let him see.”

Rey flips the image around, and Kylo just stares at it. He told Jon once that he liked him too much. It’s clear he’s thinking something along those lines again.

It’s also clear that this is not his mental image of himself.

He keeps staring at it, and finally says, “My ears are bigger, and my nose isn’t that straight, and…”

“Hush,” Rey says to him. “No, they aren’t.” She gently traces the bridge of his nose. “Yes, it’s a bit skewed from the breaks, but it’s not _that_ off. Your ears are distinctly shaped, and large, but they aren’t _huge._ This is a really good likeness.”

Kylo glares at it a bit. “You both like me way too much.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “My mom would tell you it’s a good likeness, too. As good as you can get with less than an hour to sketch. And, even if I did like you too much, I’ve got too much pride as a professional to muck up a sketch just to flatter your ego, so… There. That’s what you actually look like.

“Traditionally, _handsome_ is a mix of symmetrical features, vibrant health markers, and whatever the culture considers rare and expensive. Okay, you do not have symmetrical features, almost no one does, and the broken nose and scar certainly didn’t help that, but you’re not wildly lopsided or anything. You look _healthy._ Well, when you aren’t coming off a week of all liquid diet. Your face is a little more hollow right now than the sketch. But, generally, that’s beaming on through. And it’s a facial sketch so wealth markers aren’t going to be a thing really.

“Assuming you’re wearing something made to fit your body, you’ll look like one of the handsome princes, at least as much as any of the real ones do.”

Kylo rolls his eyes a little at that, but he doesn’t argue.

He does trace his fingers over the sketch. 

Rey kisses the top of his ear.

Jon’s got the sense of the two of them saying something to each other, though it’s less clearly a conversation this time. Maybe they’re just on the same thought.

Rey grins at him. “Okay, I’m supposed to be riding herd on the kids for dinner time. I don’t think they’re going to make or eat much, but it’s my night to be the resident adult.”

Jon and Kylo both nod at that, and Kylo kisses her, and then she’s gone.

Jon glances at the chrono. “Probably about time for me to head off, too.”

Kylo nods at that, staring at him more intently than is comfortable. It occurs to Jon, that if Poe got around to the tossing a tube of deodorant at Kylo part of the conversation, _other_ things could have been talked about.

He’s not sure if that’s exciting or not.

“Jon… are you okay?”

Jon sighs at that. He knows by the way Kylo’s asking, that he doesn’t mean on any specific issue, but his life in general. He sighs again. Whatever it was he got talking to with Poe likely opened some mental doors in Kylo that Jon would have preferred stayed closed. One of the things he’s generally found restful about being with and near Kylo is the fact that he’s, for the most part, not aware enough of the idea of okay to even ask that question. Let alone be staring at him with huge, concerned-looking eyes. “Enough, Kylo, I’m okay, enough.”

Kylo nods at that, and Jon’s got the feeling that he’s had a lot of days that didn’t even get to enough, so this is… maybe familiar ground for him.

“Do you want to have dinner with us? Not be alone.”

Jon shakes his head. “You and Rey want to talk, to each other, about everything you watched today, and I want to think some, on my own.”

“Okay. Just… It’s a standing invitation. Whenever…” Kylo licks his lips. “It’s,” he swallows, looking at the stars streaming past them. “It’s a whole lot easier to be okay, when you’re not alone, and I know it’s not the same but, you don’t have to be alone. Not… if you don’t want to be.”

Jon offers him a little half-smile. “Thanks, Kylo. But, you know, sometimes, I do. You and Rey do, too. That’s just part of being a person. Alone isn’t the enemy. But I understand and appreciate the offer. And I’ll take you up on it, but not tonight.”

“Okay.”

He’s almost out the door, when Kylo says, “Jon, what is the enemy?”

“The only one we can’t beat. Death.”

Kylo inhales and exhales, slowly at that, and then nods. “Okay.”

 

 

* * *

Two glasses.

It’s enough.

And that’s all it’s got to be.

 

 

* * *

2/13/2

 

In the morning, Jon re-reads the note. He doesn’t know why. He’s got the bloody thing memorized. That _feels_ interested to him, but… But if Poe was interested… wouldn’t he have… done something about it?

Jon sighs and grits his teeth. Then he gets out of bed and heads to the refresher.

Kylo’s asking if he’s okay.

Kylo, who’s more or less, _never_ even thought to ask about his mental health before is suddenly interested.

Because someone, and he knows it’s Poe, finally said something to him to indicate that he’s not _okay._

Jon grabs his pad and glances at the note again. He supposes he could call Poe and just _talk to him._ But, at least right now that’s just… not hitting him right.

That makes him wonder, too. _Why_ isn’t that hitting right? Not like he’s fucking shy. Not like he’s never called a man up and asked for company. Okay, it’s _been_ a while, but he still remembers how it works, and Poe is explicitly telling him to reach out if he _needs_ anything.

He looks down at his shaft as he hits the water temperature control in his shower. It still fairly stiff with his morning stand. Then he glares a bit, _that’s_ probably not what Poe meant by _need._

And even if it is…

Two glasses isn’t enough.

 

 

* * *

After dinner, he’s looking at Threepio’s formal set of orders to move the Court of Ren, Diplomacy Wing, to XX, YY, and ZZ. He’s signed off on it, approved it, and is, supposedly, working on how to use that space.

But he keeps going back to how the Maji are supposed to look. How they shape the Court of Ren, but… That’s an excuse to think of things he can put Poe in. _Commander Dameron of the Maji._

Fantasy Poe.

Wank-Fodder-Poe.

Poe-Who’s-Narrow-For-Girls and couldn’t be interested in him, and…

A million years ago, when he was in the midst some teenage existential crisis or another, Tasha was stroking his hair, letting him cry on her, and she’d said to him, “Come on, Jon, you can sort it out. You’re so good with your feelings you’re practically a girl.”

At the time, he hadn’t understood she meant it as a compliment.

At the time, it was a good way to distract himself from whatever else he was angsting about.

But the time was a long time ago, and having spent a lot more time with other men, he’s come to the conclusion that Tasha was right. He is better at understanding what’s going on in his head than a lot of other men are.

So…

Fantasy Poe, Narrow-For-Girls-Poe, Wank-Fodder-Poe is… Well, exciting really. He’s been enjoying putting Fantasy Poe through his paces.

Fantasy Poe is a good time, several good times, in a lot of different ways.

Jon sips his wine. He’s been nursing that second glass, taking smaller and smaller sips so he doesn’t have to see the bottom of it. So… Real Poe likes men. Real Poe seems to like him. Real Poe was definitely flirting with him. Real Poe should be Fantasy Poe tied up in a ribbon with a cherry on top, because Real Poe is _real._

But he’s not.

Real Poe is… He lets the images roam around in his head. Real Poe, here, in his rooms, really _here._ Talking with him. The little flirty bits. The serious bits. The obvious intelligence behind the FlyBoy. The regrets.

Real Poe is a fully rounded human being with a lot of history and experience and loves and a home and… More than just a warm body for him to wank to.

But that’s true of _everyone._ It’s been decades since he’s had a crush on a fictional character. Everyone in his fantasy life is _real._

Granted, his fantasy life tends to leave out the warts and whatnot, but… that’s sort of the _point._ It’s about being able to experience and explore something that _isn’t real._

Another sip. _Isn’t real._ Well, that’s the key now, isn’t it? Fantasy Poe isn’t real. He can’t be real. He’s… everything Jon needs him to be, no matter what that need might be on any given day.

Except, corporeal.

Real people are good with corporeal, and generally not nearly as good at the rest of it.

That’s… close. He feels like he’s on the edge of what he’s looking for.

He focuses back on Fantasy Poe. Fantasy Poe likes girls. Fantasy Poe is “narrow,” mostly. Fantasy Poe gets… coaxed… into being with him, and is new to this whole _men_ thing. He’s not cloaked. Not intentionally. He likes girls, he’s just… been ignoring the fact that he likes boys, too.

Which, is, apparently, so far off the mark, it’s in a different quadrant of an entirely different galaxy.

Jon chews on that idea. He likes those fantasies. He certainly wasn’t kidding about the fantasy with Jacen, either. There’s something… _exquisite_ about being someone’s first _really good_ time. But it’s not a _thing_ for him. It’s not like he’s got an inexperience kink. Or if he does, he’s doing a terrible job indulging it. Most of the people he’s had sex with in the last two years are Specs, so it’s not like they’re _inexperienced._ Lane started fucking before Jon was potty-trained, and by the time they’d gotten together he’d already tripled Lane’s score, so, again, lack of experience, on either side, wasn’t a thing for them.

Hell, they never even role played it. It just wasn’t on the scanners.

And, before Poe, it also wasn’t something he often fantasied about. Now and again, sure. And he certainly fondly remembered a lot of those adventures, but it wasn’t anything he was actively seeking out.

He rubs his forehead and thinks. Why is Fantasy Poe narrow?

Better question, why did he immediately decide Poe was narrow for women? 

Most men are. True, but… He’s usually able to spot guys who like guys, and Poe’s not exactly hiding who he is. Not like the man has a wife and two kids. He doesn’t have a pretty girl painted on the side of his ship. Hell… _Micah_. That’s the name on his ship. That’s a _male_ name.

Poe didn’t flirt, at first… Jon thinks. Yeah, that’s right. He didn’t flirt until he got into Jon’s apartment and saw the pictures of Lane. Why… He thinks further through their interactions. Right… The first thing Poe ever heard him say was about his _girl_ friend.

Okay, that makes a certain amount of sense. He started to flirt _after_ he saw the pictures of him and Lane, and must have decided that if he had Lane and a girlfriend, he was open to play.

Well, that explains Poe’s side of it.

It doesn’t explain his.

Why decide Poe was narrow? Why fantasize about it? Why…

When it hits, Jon pours himself another glass of wine, and drinks it down, fast.

Narrow Poe is _unavailable._ Narrow Poe likes _women._ The only thing Narrow Poe can’t ever be for him is anything other than a fantasy.

 

 

* * *

_Disappointed._

Kylo had said that, and… He wasn’t wrong.

It’s slipping into place now. Real Poe is _real._ And… Real Poe is good for more than a wank. (He’s likely good for that, too.) But… Real Poe has opinions and skills and a history and… Force, so much history, but… It’s not a deal breaker. He felt that ache when he was starting to talk about the attack on the _Supremacy,_ but… would have talked and found a way to slip the tracker…

He doesn’t think, won’t think, about what Poe would have done if there hadn’t been a way to slip it. He knows. Bad odds, not a suicide mission. He would have led what was left of the Navy of the Resistance against the _Supremacy,_ hoping for another one in a million chance, probably praying to Luke Skywalker for that one fatal flaw, and died bravely.

He _likes_ Real Poe. He knows he felt a spark of eagerness. Sewing the outfit while Real Poe slept, looking forward to him getting up and talking to him more.

That was real.

He’s fairly sure Real Poe likes him, too. Real Poe was flirty and attentive and warm. Real Poe enjoyed interacting with him, even if he is an Imperial cast off. Real Poe… He makes himself see them on the sofa, makes his mind clear the fuzzy edges. Real Poe wanted him. But didn’t act on it.

Opposites attract. That’s another line, right? Well, they’d been set up to be perfect opposites, and if this Force stuff is real…

Kylo talks about being more or less designed for Rey. Destiny and all that.

 

 

Jon stares at his empty wineglass. Two isn’t enough for _destiny_ either. Three isn’t enough for _destiny._ There probably isn’t enough alcohol in the galaxy to handle _destiny._

He looks at one of the pictures of him and Lane.

“Fuck destiny.” Fuck any _destiny_ that he’s got to go through _here_ to get to. 

Fuck the Force, fuck the Gods, fuck anything that’s made him have to be here, alone in this fucking apartment filled with ghosts and memories and no real… no real… anything.

Fuck a universe that ripped his home in half and…

And that’s where it crystallizes, sharp and perfect.

He _likes_ Poe. Poe likes him. That’s how these things start. But it’s not how they end.

He touches his wedding ring. The ring that no longer has a mate.

Jon swallows, hard. He leapt fast and stupid with Lane, and got lucky. So fucking lucky. And whatever this is with Poe… He sighs a little, glares a lot. Jon twirls his ring around his finger. He looks at the wine glass, and he knows what he can’t do sober, and…

He _can’t_ do this again. He cannot go through this one more time. He cannot sit in a shredded home with his heart on fire, and lost, and…

This _cannot_ happen to him again. He’s barely made it through once, and he will not make it through a second time.

But he can feel it, in the way he’s remembering spending time with Poe. It’s there in the lift in his mood at the idea of seeing him. “Fucking hell,” it’s here in this moment, now, in his fear and his pain.

It’s here because this is starting, whether he wants it to or not.

And he doesn’t know if he can kill it, and honestly, he doesn’t _want_ to kill it, and the fear is choking him, and the desire is there and real and…

And he _really_ wants another fucking drink.

He’s moving toward his freezer. The vodka is in there. The vodka that isn’t a problem, yet. But it could be. Could be so easily…

He stops. Growls in frustration, and then taps his comm. “Hey, Em.”

“Yeah, Boss.”

“Can I see you? I’m having a really bad night.”

“Of course, Jon. Meet me half way?”

“Sure.” She lives seventeen klicks away. Getting out and moving toward her will help. “Yeah. I will.”

“Good. See you soon.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last thoughts. I think it's important that Jon have a life outside of Kylo. So, I get that some of you probably wished he'd taken Kylo up on his, 'You don't have to be alone' offer, and, eventually, he will, but... Right now, Kylo and Rey, and uncomplicated domestic bliss isn't what Jon needs. 
> 
> Also, one thing we're not going to go into is what Jon and Em do. Shoulder to cry on, comfort sex, long walk around the F-Deck... Any and all options are on the table, but for now, I'll give him his privacy for how he's dealing. We know that he is, in fact, attempting to make good choices. 
> 
> And, for right now, that's enough.


	25. Princing About

2/13/2

 

It had never, ever occurred to Kylo that getting twenty-four kids, him and Rey, Rose and Paige, to one place, at once, would be an issue.

Likely because he didn’t, on any level, think about it.

Because, well, honestly, in his world, logistics is something that happens to someone else. He says, “This needs to happen.” And then somehow, magically, it does. He almost never has to _make_ any of these things happen.

If he had though, he probably would have thought of it like moving a few squads of troops. Completely and utterly missing the point that twenty-four kids are about as not a few squads as it’s possible for people to be.

It was during breakfast, with Rey, when she says, “I had to make three trips to get the kids to the F-Deck,” that it occurs to both of them that teleporting everyone is possible, but it’ll be long and annoying.

“My command shuttle should have room for everyone.” Because he does, in fact, have a vehicle specifically designed to move him and a few squads worth of troops, plus some officers, from place to place.

“When was the last time you flew it?”

He thinks. And thinks. Probably returning from the _Supremacy_ to Qualee, after the fight. “It’s been a while.” He grabs his comm. “C8, how long would it take to have my command shuttle ready to go?”

“Eight minutes, sir.”

“Get it ready for me.”

 

* * *

If he’d been thinking about it, it would have occurred to him that attempting to land his shuttle during a major snowstorm would have also been annoying.

It’s not an issue. Not like it would be for a pilot who needs to use his eyes to do things like this, or has to rely on the ship’s sensors, which also do not appreciate the snow flowing through their fields, but even though he can feel the ground below him, and even though he can help stabilize his ship (though _that’s_ taking more energy than he’d like, _fucking plague_ ) it still takes a few passes to get his shuttle on the ground.

Technically, by Lirium’s standards 70 kmh winds aren’t a blizzard. But they are a pain in the butt for an easy landing.

 

* * *

It’s getting the kids onto the shuttle where the complications of putting twenty-four kids and Rose and Paige on his ship come to life.

First of all, the kids don’t just queue up nice and orderly and march on up. Stormtroopers do that. Tell Stormtroopers to get on a ship, and they get on a ship. Stormtroopers do not require reminding to get on the ship. Beyond one, lone, single order, they do not require instructions to get on a ship.

Children are not Stormtroopers. Children mill about, stop in the middle of the ramp to stare at the ship, decide halfway in that they forgot their pet cuddly toy and that it absolutely has to come on the trip with them, or, thirty seconds before closing the hatch decide they *HAVE* to go to the refresher now, and they *CAN’T POSSIBLY* wait to get to the _Supremacy_ and… of course his command shuttle, which is not designed to do more than move a few squads from the _Supremacy_ to wherever they’re landing, does not have a refresher.

(Kylo is somewhat suspicious that if Finn were here, the kids would have queued up with no problems, because it does seem that when Finn says ‘Move’ those kiddos move, but he’s with Chewie on their first post-plague run.)

And Jacen, and Critt, and Marrok, and Opal, and Rey all want to fly the bloody thing.

And Rose is giggling as his blood pressure is rising as they’re trying to get the kids on the damn ship.

She steps closer to him, enjoying his discomfort vastly too much, and says quietly, “If you think this is fun, wait until we’ve got to walk them from wherever we’re landing to the theater.”

He doesn’t groan, out loud.

 

 

* * *

Once they’re off the ground, and out of the snowstorm, Kylo lets Rey fly.

It’s not that she’s not a good enough pilot to get the shuttle off the ground. It’s that he’s nervous and on edge enough with the kids squirming about all over the place that giving up control of the ship in the middle of an almost-but-not-quite blizzard is just a step too far.

Once they’re past the atmo, and the ship is still moving, and the kids haven’t broken anything, he’s willing to slide out of the pilot’s seat and hand it over.

The kids mope a little as Rey scoots into the pilot’s seat, and there’s an undercurrent of _favoritism._

After a few moments of it, Kylo decides to just laugh about it. “Of course, she’s my favorite person. I _married_ her.”

The kids are amused by that.

Rey pets him.

Rose smiles.

That feels good.

For a moment, until he’s lunging over to stop Blaine from pushing the buttons that deploy the weapons. (And a wet, cold, liquid snow down his back thought is hitting him because those buttons aren’t far from the ones that jettison the cargo (not a problem) and the fuel (massive problem.)

It’s a command shuttle, so it doesn’t have a lot of them, and they’re in deep space, so they likely wouldn’t hit much, but…

Technically, the flight is thirty-six minutes. Kylo would tell you it took at least sixteen hours.

 

 

* * *

They’re ten minutes in when the kids start complain about getting hot. Likely because, they’re in a ship rated to -600. They’re dressed for moving through an almost-but-not-quite blizzard on Lirium.

So then there’s removing coats and snow pants, there’s tucking them in around his seats, there’s…

He’s staring at Jacen. “Why are you in uniform?”

Jacen shrugs a bit. “I enlisted?”

Kylo knows that’s a banthashit answer, but he doesn’t poke it. Jacen earned that uniform, so… “Some Captain sees you and sets you on busy work, I’m not going to get you out of it.”

Jacen grins. “You won’t need to.”

A moment later, as he’s helping Torine get a stuck zipper unstuck, he hears Critt say, “Really, why are you wearing it?”

Jacen shrugs again. “Not sure. I just know it’ll work better if I am.”

“Future flash?” Savarah asks.

Jacen nods.

Kylo sighs. _Great._

 

 

* * *

They want to see _everything._

That’s the biggest problem with taking a bunch of kids anywhere, and especially somewhere new. They want to see the landing bay. They want to see the other ships. They want to push every button in the elevators. They want to see all the floors between the landing bay and the F-Deck. They want to stop at _every_ shop between the elevators and the cinema.

And it’s not that every single one of them wants to do every single thing, but enough of them want to do enough of the things to make everything chaotic and tense.

(Why Luke never took them anywhere is occurring to Kylo. He sighs. The feel of compassion for that is irking him, deeply. After all, once upon a time he would have very happily been a kid on a trip like this, wanting to linger and see every fucking ship within the range of his vision.)

Rey and Rose are at the front of the group, holding the hands of some of the younger kids, and leading them on. Savarah, Cassie, and Magiit are in the middle, keeping them on track. He, Jacen, Critt, and Elias are in the back, making sure there are no stragglers.

Mostly he’s side-stepping left and right, grabbing small people who “I was just looking…” as they fall behind the rest of the group. By the time they’re a quarter of the way to the cinema, he’s got Rugh riding on his shoulders “So she can see everything” and he doesn’t have to keep eyes on her to make sure she doesn’t wander off.

 

 

He’s glad he’s in his casual clothing, because he’s already getting a lot of attention as is. A wave of stunned silence is moving through the F-deck with them. If he’d been in his command blacks, there would likely be a collection of officers leaping to attention, offering to help corral kids.

He’s almost tempted to see if he could do that.

He feels Rey laughing in the back of his mind. _You know I do a version of this every day, right?_

_No, I didn’t, and better you than me._

She laughs out loud at that. _So, you’re saying you don’t want twenty kids?_

If it had been just a few of them, he could see how this could be fun. And Rugh on his shoulders is more or less bubbling over with joy, and that’s infectious. So, this… on a much smaller scale, could be a good time. (And he really doesn’t mind the feel of a very happy little person on his shoulders, squealing with glee at everything she sees. That’s… _nice._ )

_How about we try one, see how that goes, and add another if it works well?_

He feels her laugh at that.

 

 

* * *

Finally, they’re at the theater. Finally. He gives Rugh a hand down, but she keeps standing with him, holding his hand, until Rey starts introducing Jon to the rest of the kids.

That’s a relief. Jon is good with kids. He’ll kneel down to talk to them. He learns all of their names. He gestures to the counter where the snacks are and tells them they’re allowed to pick two snacks and a drink each. Rey goes with the youngest ones to help them get what they want.

He’s so relieved to finally get the kids into an enclosed space, and to see Jon getting along with them, and that they didn’t lose any of them on the trek, and… For a moment, that’s all he’s paying attention to. The overwhelming feeling of successfully getting all of these kids to the right place at something close to the right time.

For a moment. Then a new sensation begins to creep up on him. He feels it and starts to wince, head turning toward Jacen before he entirely knows _what_ he’s feeling.

Jon’s saying hello to the older kids.

Jacen’s behind the rest of the bunch.

Jacen has _not_ missed Jon.

And it’s true that male beauty isn’t exactly anything Kylo pays any attention to. He knows it’s real. He knows that Jon is _handsome._ He knows these the way someone who can read music knows that a song is pleasant to the ear. He can _understand_ this in an academic sort of way, but he can’t feel it.

Until now. A massive, deep, throbbing wave of _OH, FUCK ME!_ both an exclamation and a request just rolled right over him as Jacen set eyes on Jon.

It’s strong enough, that for a heartbeat, he _knows_ what Jacen is seeing when he looks at Jon. Jon is fucking sex on legs and Poe’s description of him, perfect, golden, fuck me lips, it’s all _there._

And then Jon looks back at Jacen.

 _It’ll work better._ Oh, shit! Jacen’s standing there in an Ensign’s uniform. Trying to make himself look like sex on legs, too.

And Jacen can _feel_ that Jon likes men. And, apparently, Jacen’s succeeding in his attempt at sex on legs.

And it’s like watching a slow motion ship crash. He _can’t_ turn away, and right now he feels powerless to do anything about it.

Jon extends his hand, Jacen takes it, licks his lips, and Jon _quivers._

 

__

 

The other teens are having a blast. Critt’s mentally cheering Jacen on, _Go get him!_ is the least salacious thing hurtling around in Jacen’s mind right now, and Jon, poor fucking, massively outclassed Jon, is… Kylo refuses to get into his mind enough to know what he’s seeing. He just… Does not need to know Jon that well.

He does, he thinks, need to stop him from acting on anything he’s wanting to do with Jacen.

Kylo finally gets his wits, and powers, back together and slams both of them with a very strong _STOP._ He knows Jacen got it as a word. He thinks, from how Jon responds, that it was just a feeling for him.

Jon blinks, squints, blushes for a moment, breaks eye contact, pulls himself together, looks up and says, “Stop it. You can try again in five years, when you’re on the other side of twenty and more than half my age.”

Jacen, utterly unperturbed by Kylo’s _STOP_ command, looks Jon up and down, plants a few images that… if Kylo had been unsure of what two men may do with each other while having sex, he’s bloody well not _now,_ in Jon’s head, and says, “I’ll mark my calendar, _sir_.”

 

 

* * *

When the first film begins, Kylo is not paying attention to it. He’s staring at the back of Jacen’s head. He’s a few rows ahead, with the rest of the older kids, munching through popcorn and snacks, giving off a general, _this is fun, we should do it more often_ sort of sense.

Of all the things he could have possibly anticipated for this outing, Jacen attempting to seduce Jon was nowhere on his list.

Jacen catches the stare, and knows why it’s aimed at him. Kylo can feel the eye roll, and see Jacen slump down further into his chair. _I wasn’t going to do anything,_ he thinks to Kylo, mental voice a bit sulky.

Kylo aims a mental glare at him. He’s simultaneously starting to possibly see the value of enforced celibacy among kids with mind-control powers, and the extremely uncomfortable moment of thinking that Luke might have been onto something with that. This is well beyond his earlier moment of compassion, and he doesn’t much know what to do with it.

Rey gives his hand a little squeeze. _Cinema, love._ _This doesn’t need to happen now._

He kisses her hand. _I really think it does._

 _Fine. Get it out of your head so you can focus._ She leans in against him, and he can feel she’s right. The only reason he’s got to do this _now_ is that if he doesn’t it’ll just sit there and chew at him.

He thinks to Jacen. _Next time we train, we’re going to have a chat about appropriate uses of your powers._

That gets an eyeroll, too. _He liked it._

_That’s not the point._

_Really? I wasn’t making him think anything he didn’t want to think. Just letting him play with the idea._

Another mental glare. _You were trying to get him to play with you._

Snotty, sarcastic, teenage eye roll aimed back at Kylo. _Come on, we’re in public, with twenty-five other people around. Nothing’s happening other than thinking. I was just enjoying the attention. It’s been a million years since I got a second look from anyone._

Kylo pauses at that. He glances around. Yes, this is a very dark room, with even darker curtains, and some secluded corners, and… Yeah, Jon obviously doesn’t have a do-not-look spell, but it’d probably take Jacen about a minute and a half to figure the trick to it and--

 _Oh…_ Jacen’s grinning widely, turning back to gaze at Jon (who is sitting next to Kylo, and has not, on any level missed the fact that _something_ is going on around him) very amused and wishing he’d put just a bit more lust into his voice. _Huh… Well… That would have been fun._ Then he catches Kylo remembering his and Rey’s tryst in a room very similar to this.

Jacen laughs out loud at that. _I’ll certainly have to add this to my to-do list._

Kylo’s head drops into his hands and the shudder of _Why am I dealing with randy teenagers?_ flows through his head.

Rey strokes his back. _Because he likes you best out of the group of us adults, which means it’s possible he might actually listen to you._

It’s Kylo’s turn to roll his eyes, but… Well, that’s the point of uncles or big brothers, or whatever the hell it is he’s attempting to be for Jacen. Be an adult the kid is fond of, provide some sort of guidance, and try not to fuck it up too badly.

_You’re not fucking it up._

He kisses Rey’s hand again.

The credits finish.

And the story begins.

 

* * *

Rey falls into the story _hard._ Part of it is just she’s never actually _seen_ one before. Yes, there was that one ‘romantic comedy’ and the ‘adventures in physical therapy’ holo they’d watched, but this is the first time she’s sat down to see a full-on adventure designed in bright, flashy colors with beyond state-of-the-art animation, complete orchestral musical accompaniment, and singing and dancing animals.

It’s _blowing her mind._

 

__

 

Kylo’s not exactly enjoying the movie. Once it started playing, he knew he’d seen it before, as a child.

He is enjoying feeling Rey watch it for the first time.

This one starts with a Princess whose parents die and the step-mother who’s in charge of raising her is absolute scum. She tries to kill the Princess, but fails, because of the intervention of the singing/talking/dancing animals, who whisk her off to safety to live in hiding with a collection of Ewoks.

(That’s part of why Kylo doesn’t like this movie, even as a child. He’s always thought Ewoks were kind of creepy, likely because, according to his Dad, they were trying to eat him. And, of course, when Threepio tells a story, he _tells a story_ so the part where they're getting ready to roast Dad and Uncle Luke alive was a really vivid image in his mind for a very long time.)

But, she’s off with the Ewoks, and life is going pretty well, but the Evil Step-Mother Queen realizes she’s not dead, so off The Queen goes to fix that problem, and en route to do that she gets into a fight with the Handsome Scoundrel. (Who does not, as of yet, know he’s a prince.)

He survives by the skin of his teeth. (And more intervention from singing animals. Kylo’s also never been sure why this show is a _musical_ but, again, Rey’s sitting next to him, holding his hand, tight, leaning in toward the screen, so entranced she hasn’t eaten any of her popcorn, so whoever made this might have known what they were doing.)

The Scoundrel (while running away from the Queen’s men) runs into the Princess, and the two of them join forces to retake the crown, and get rid of the queen. (With the help of the singing animals and the Ewoks, and a few friendly robots. He’s got the sense they probably sold a lot of toys to go with this movie. As best he can recall, he had two of the Ewoks, who had big, black shiny plexi-plast eyes that always followed him no matter where he was in the room. This also may have had something to do with him not being a fan of Ewoks. And possibly a few years of his night-terrors.)

At the end of the movie, the Queen has been dispatched. The Handsome Scoundrel and the Princess have fallen in love, but she’s got to marry a prince, and he’s not one, so he heads off, having kissed her cheek, and she and her advisers go prince hunting for her.

She’s turning princes down right and left, annoying her advisers. Eventually, they point out to her that she’s got to pick _someone._ So, she does. Because, apparently, she lives in some sort of bizarre corner of the galaxy where Princesses can’t become a Queen unless she’s got a Prince stashed somewhere. (The Evil Stepmom Queen didn't have her own prince, but... He can feel Rey shushing how he's thinking about the plot holes. He focuses on the story.)

The Scoundrel, lost and feeling useless, wanders into a bar, where someone notices the ring his father gave him just before he died, and suddenly he’s a prince, too, because he’s the son of the King in Exile of… (Kylo really didn’t remember this movie being this complicated, but a few new singing animals show up and…)

It’s the wedding day, everything is ready to go. The Princess is gloriously beautiful in her very fancy dress. The castle has been scrubbed to sparkling. Prince Disposable Plot Point is standing around looking wan and dull.

She’s walking down the aisle toward Prince Disposable Plot Point. Rey’s tensing up, because she can’t believe _this_ is how the story is going to end. Kylo strokes the back of her neck.

They start their vows, and then there’s a commotion, and the Handsome Scoundrel, all dressed up, with his Prince Bonafides shined up and ready to go, bursts in, decks Prince Disposable Plot Point when he gets annoyed that his wedding was just hijacked by this no one from nowhere, and…

He and the Princess kiss, and the vicar seals their vows, and they head off, happily ever after into the sunset.

Kylo, absently, notices that his face is wet. He wipes a tear away, and then turns to Rey. _You’re crying?_

She wipes her face and sniffles. _It’s so…_ She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

He cuddles her close and kisses the top of her head. 

  


* * *

The movies are… interesting, sometimes.

Two of them didn’t do much for Kylo, but he can feel a lot of the kids liked them.

The one they’re on currently… He likes this one. Rey does, too. Rose, Jon, and the teens are having a good time. The plot is solid, the actors in this one are pretty good, and there’s enough genuine tension and attraction in this one that it feels _real._

The kids are a little bored, possibly because this one doesn’t involve any talking animals, or musical numbers. Though, even right now, they’re watching closely.

The Handsome Prince is about to explain, in an extremely bloody and very permanent sort of way, that messing with his Lady is a _bad_ plan. (Kylo’s only, momentarily, wishing he could do something like this with the-would-be rapist princeling. He lets that go fast, not wanting to share it with Rey right next to him.)

Kylo’s leaning forward, feeling the fight about to start, and there’s that heartbeat, that he knows so well, where there’s still a chance of _not_ doing whatever it is, and then it passes and the fight is on and… He’s tense leaning into it, ready, and…

This was the first of the movies Kylo really got into, because this was the first one where the Handsome Prince felt… real, to him. The other two were just too damn perfect, but this is a man with edges and some depth, but…

That’s falling apart fast as he’s drawing his sword.

Kylo squints, jerking back a bit.

His lips purse and then roll.

He glances at Rey, and yes, she’s having a similar reaction to this.

 _I don’t… look like that… when I fight, right?_ Kylo thinks to her.

 _No. I… Think he’s dancing with a sword. That’s… not a fight._ Mr. Handsome Prince is whirling his blade around in a stupidly fast circle, zipping it from right to left and back again and… Kylo could, almost, sort of, see why you might do that with a light saber if people were shooting at you. A lot of them, but… This is a metal sword and everyone else here has metal swords, and…

This just looks like a good way to tire out your arms long before the fight’s over.

 _No… I didn’t think… You don’t look like that when you fight, either._ He thinks back to Rey.

She shakes her head. The Prince’s Lady is in head to toe silk satins, thick rich ones, brocades and solids, layer after layer of it. _How would you even do it in that heavy of a robe?_

Kylo shrugs. _I mean… If you had to, I guess you just would, but… By my reckoning, she’d have been dead a few moves ago, while he was prancing about burning energy on useless flourishes._

They watch for a few more moments. Finally, Rey says, _You do that._

_Which that?_

_The thing where he’s swinging the sword around for no real reason. Twirling it, at the end of each swing. I remember that. When we were in the forest…_

Kylo rolls his eyes a little. _I was_ showing off _when we were in the forest. I… didn’t actually consider you or Finn a real fight. Not until he actually hit me, and I took him out two moves later. And, I was attempting not to hurt you. You didn’t see me doing that with the guard, did you? Or Qualee._

He feels her think. _Not sure. I was a lot more distracted when we fought the guard. And I saw Qualee from your point of view, so I have no idea what you were doing outside your immediate view._

He smirks a bit at that.

 _Well, maybe he’s showing off, too,_ Rey thinks to Kylo.

 _Bad time for it. You’ll notice my complete lack of showing off when there was a chance something might actually hurt_ you.

_If they ever make a film of us, you’ll have to tell them no showing off at bad times._

He sniggers at that, and has another bite of popcorn.

 

 

* * *

By the last ten minutes of the third one Rey’s feeling… unsettled. Not so much in the way of nervous or wary, but… That image Jacen said wasn’t coming into focus maybe because she didn’t want it to focus.

It’s focusing whether she wants it to, or not.

The Prince and Princess are holding each other’s hands. Their binder is tying a length of ribbon around them. They’re gazing into each other’s eyes, minds on what they’ve overcome to get to that moment, hopes on a future where they’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Handsome Prince. The Royal Couple.

Rulers supreme, the face of their people, together, in all things.

There’s no chance, that when this is done, the Handsome Prince goes off princing about, and she starts an orphanage.

That’s not how this story works.

 

 

* * *

By the end of the third one, Kylo’s definitely feeling like he’s got the script on this. And he’s more than a bit unsettled at the idea that this _story_ has not only been told and retold, but seems to track so well with his own life.

Okay, yes, it’s not measure for measure dead on. Handsome Princes, even really “bad” ones, don’t seem to have nearly the kill count he does, and for two of them, “bad” seemed to be more by association than by slaughtering adolescents based on their Force sensitivity, or murdering bankers because they won’t extend his credit indefinitely, or blowing up planets because something he didn’t like happened there a decade earlier.

He chews his lip. Rage. Blowing up a planet because he couldn’t master his rage.

The men in these stories never burn red, let alone black, but… Two of the three of them are designed to entertain children, and the one they just finished was appropriate for young adults, so… They may be _edited._

They likely won’t put in how he got the nickname JediKiller, let alone what happened to his father, or Jakku if they ever make a film of them, either.

 

 

* * *

It’s a fight. A drop down, drag out, four on fifty, good guys are drawing the line in the sand (or on the ship, this one’s a literal sailing on water ship) and will take not another step.

They’re going to win or die here.

“Captain! Marry us!”

Both the Handsome Prince and the Captain blink at that, neither expecting that right here, right now, in the middle of a fight to the death that the Princess would think _now’s_ the time for some nuptials.

But…

“If today’s our last day, then I’ll end it yours,” The Princess says, fending off the blows of one of the seeming endless number of bad guys, and that… resonates with Rey.

It’s the fastest damn wedding in the history of weddings, and likely the bloodiest, but it feels… real… probably because she can remember the feel of fighting the guard.

And maybe that’s not the moment that made them married. There’s probably no _moment_ that did it. Just a long series of them.

But that’s the moment they chose each other. The moment where it became a possibility.

They win. And live.

And the story ends with the two of them on a beach, and there’s a pretty dress, and he’s in a nice suit, and a few close friends are together to celebrate with them. Rum and bonfires, fiddles and dancing. The handsome couple, “King and Queen of Pirates, married by blood, wedded on sand.’ (‘Bedded on a hammock,’ the amusing side kick adds, under his breath.)

She snuggles closer to Kylo liking the idea of that. _Married by blood, wedded on sand,_ she thinks to him.

He turns his head to her, and holds her a little tighter. _If it ever thaws out, there is a beach on Lirium._

Rey smiles at that. 

 _Do you know what a hammock is?_ Kylo thinks. There’s a mental smile to go with that question.

_Like a big net with pillows on it._

_That could be interesting._

 

* * *

By the fourth one of these, Kylo’s feeling a bit edgy. Part of it’s just sitting around in one place for too long. A lot of the younger kids aren’t even watching the show anymore. They’ve got that same sort of too much sitting in one place energy that he does, so they’re not exactly quietly, but not making a ton of noise, either, running up and down the aisle and crawling around under the chairs.

He’s somewhat tempted to join them. And it’s not escaping his attention that Critt appears to be leading the run around the aisles games.

(Why they rented out the whole cinema for this is making a lot of sense. If other people had wanted to watch this, the little guys would be deeply annoying.)

And part of it is… He doesn’t look like the men in the pictures.

Rey looks like the women. Maybe not right this second, when she’s in her casual clothing. (The women in these films do not appear to have casual clothing.) And she’s not wearing makeup. (The ladies in the pictures appear to have been born wearing makeup. Even when they’re supposed to be dirty and disheveled, even in the middle of life or death fights, they’re just… slightly less well-kempt. Even in the one mildly salacious scene where the Prince finds the Princess swimming, she’s still, somehow, got makeup on.) But, apply some makeup to Rey, and put her in Princess clothing, and she looks like a princess. Maybe a bit more muscly than the ladies in the pictures, but…

She’s awfully close. (Though he does feel her shake her head, _no_ at that, but… She’s just wrong about that. All she needs to look like a Princess is a pretty dress and some makeup.)

He’s not.

At all.

He’s bigger than all of the men. Wider, thicker, taller, bigger ears, bigger nose, bigger lips, bigger feet. Bigger. These men are on the long and lean side of things, and while he’s certainly long, he’s not (usually) lean. They look like Jon. Even the one with dark hair. (Two of the four of them have been blond, and one has had light brown hair.)

Every one of these films has involved the Handsome Prince fighting. Often with a sword of some sort. (He’s not entirely sure if that long, thin, metal toothpick looking thing the one prince is using qualifies as a sword.) Once with a blaster. None of them have any scars. At all. (Though two of them have taken wounds to the shoulder, about where Rey ran him through with her lightsaber. Apparently, that’s a ‘manly’ sort of place to get wounded, or something. Though, on them, it doesn’t appear to have impeded the use of that arm, or the ability to crack jokes, at all. He’s fairly sure he wasn’t making snarky remarks after Rey ran him through.)

Their teeth are perfect, gleaming white, and they smile easily. Even the ‘dark’ one put him much more in mind of his father’s attitude than his.

They do not have moles. Their skin is perfectly even.

They have short hair, and it looks fine because they don’t have to try and hide ears the size of scanner dishes, that are determined to jut out of the sides of their heads.

All four of them have light-colored eyes, blue or green, in one case a mesmerizing violet shade, that Kylo feels like he shouldn’t be paying that much attention to, but he can’t for the life of him figure out if it’s real or not.

If this is the universe’s ideal of a Handsome Prince, he’s going to fail miserably.

Rey squeezes his hand. _Yeah, I know that feeling._

He sighs. _Rey… You don’t look like the women because you aren’t dressed up. I don’t look like the men because I’m practically a different species._

_No, you aren’t!_

_I’ve got at least seven centimeters, probably fifteen kilos, even now, and a pile of scars on all of them. I’ve got the wrong hair and eye color. You can tell by looking at my face that I’ve_ lost _fights. These men don’t lose fights. Put you in the right outfit, and you look like you’ve stepped out of the show. Put me in the right outfit, and I’m going to look wrong, because, like Jon keeps telling me, I’m not built for those sorts of clothing._

 _Kylo._ She sighs a little and snuggles close, trying to flood him with warm, happy feelings.

He kisses her forehead. _I know. I love you, too. I don’t look like those guys._

 

__

 

She sighs a bit more, and offers him a sugared nut. He eats it from her fingers. 

 

 

* * *

When the movies are over, Kylo and Rey take a moment to talk, and decide to port the kids back. Yes, it’s time consuming, but compared to the stress of taking twenty-four now antsy, tired, wired and apparently over-sugared kids through the F-Deck…

Neither of them want to do that.

Jon nods at them, and says to Kylo, “I’ll meet you in your office in an hour or so, okay?”

That sounds good to Kylo.

Also, he can, fairly easily, grab four or five of the little ones in one go, so that speeds things up.

And an hour later, he’s in his office, sitting on the bench, looking out at the sky, when Jon gets there. Rey’s got the kids with Rose, but she’ll be joining him in a bit. Both of them know Jon wants to talk to them about what they just watched.

Kylo’s not sure what he wants to say about what they watched, so… “Look, I’m sorry about the thing with Jacen. He’s… seventeen.” And the way he says that number more or less wraps all of the issues up. It’s always easier to talk about someone else than himself. And Jacen’s prime someone-else-to-talk-about material.

Jon chuckles. “Yeah, I remember seventeen.” He says with a knowing nod, and a smirk. “Wouldn’t be the first time a seventeen-year-old had an inappropriate hard-on. Had more than a few of them myself back in the day.”

C8 decides now’s a very good time to fiddle with something in the throne room and heads off.

Kylo raises an eyebrow at Jon. He knows Jon was _not_ unaffected by Jacen’s magic... body… self… All three.

He shrugs a bit, runs his hand through his hair, looks away a little as he rolls his eyes. “Wouldn’t be the first time a seventeen-year-old caused one, too.” He meets Kylo’s gaze again. “I certainly did back in the day.”

 

 

Kylo doesn’t know what to do with that. As best he knows, seventeen-year-old-Ben did not inspire anything approaching erotic or lustful feelings, in anyone, ever. “He’s too young.”

“Yeah, even I could feel that boiling off of you, Papa Urus. I’m not about to go tearing through your young and despoiling them. Though, if anyone was ever gaging for a good despoiling, it’s that kid.”

Kylo blinks, because he knows the meaning of all of those words, and can feel the emotional content behind them, but that’s a bunch of ideas he’s never run into before.

Jon really notices that Kylo’s sort of lounging, says, “You know what, fuck it,” takes off his jacket and gloves, and then gets himself a drink, too. “This isn’t an in-uniform formal sort of chat. We might as well both be comfortable.”

Kylo blinks a little, looking at Jon. “I thought… Aren’t the shirts supposed to have sleeves?”

“The standards ones do, but I find them too hot with the coat. Since the coat was required in the regs, I tailored the shirt to make it work for me. Okay,” he sits near Kylo getting comfortable. “When’d you find Jacen?”

 

 

Kylo’s not sure. “Six months ago?” He purses his lips. “He might be eighteen by now.” He thinks for a moment, no. “Seventeen. He was sixteen when I found him.”

Jon shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Seventeen, eighteen, all the same. Hell, as we just saw, twenty-two can also still be in the thick of it. Okay, I’m going to say this, and you can agree, or not, or just think about it, but, if he’d been in training with us, as a pilot, for six months, we’d be sending him out in real ships by now. And he’d likely be starting his first combat training runs. So, he’s old enough to enlist with us, he’s old enough to kill for us, he’s old enough to die for us, I’d say he’s old enough to choose to fuck and to choose who to fuck.” Jon gives Kylo a long look. “Without Daddy butting in and pulling the rug out from under him. If he wants advice, he’ll ask you for it. That kid is _not_ shy.”

That’s another idea that’s also never threatened to go wandering through Kylo’s mind. And it’s clear on his face.

Jon continues, “Yeah, I don’t know what you want to do with that, because it’s clear you don’t think he’s old enough to fuck, but…”

Kylo shrugs. “He’s… a special case. It’s not… seventeen-year-olds in general are too young. I don’t know. I didn’t think seventeen was too young when I was seventeen, and now it seems freakishly immature.”

Jon cocks his head at that, conceding that point.

Kylo’s eyes narrow, and he realizes that ‘old enough to fuck’ might not mean ‘Jacen is old enough to have sex’ and Jon may be saying to him, ‘seventeen-year-olds are old enough for _me_ to have sex with,’ “And, I honestly do not care how old your friends are. Again, seventeen seems young to me, but—“ He doesn’t say that they aren’t sure how old Rey is, and it’s possible she was nineteen when they first got together.

Jon rolls his eyes. “That’s not the way I meant it. And I’m not saying I haven’t had some awfully good times with more than a few seventeen-year-olds, but I was…” He thinks. “Twenty-two the last time it happened.”

Kylo’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. It’s also not exactly where he wants to go with this. “Like I said, Jacen’s a special case. And, I am attempting to get you to be aware of something specific to him. He’s got too much power, and his ability to make good decisions with it isn’t exactly balanced well against how badly he wants to get fucked, or be desired… and… All he has to do is _ask_ and you’ll say yes, so… Just as a heads up for you personally, which is why I’m mentioning this to you, and as being aware of the challenges of dealing with Jacen, _if you’re ever alone with him_ … Just… He probably won’t push it, but… He can feel you’re tempted, so maybe he would… It might be a good idea not to be alone with him.”

It’s clear from the look on Jon’s face that he’s fairly sure he can handle Jacen.

Kylo shakes his head. If Jon’s sure about that, it also means he doesn’t get the scale of what Jacen can do. And why it’s an issue. “Like you said about your Mom, it’ll always sound reasonable. Now turn the power up by a factor of a million, if not more. He was just playing with you. Bored, lonely… He used to be at a circus, and then here with the Order; he’s used to having company. And just like everyone else, he likes being desired. Which just isn’t happening back home. He likes Critt. And that’s going nowhere because Critt’s all about Savarah. And for all I know both of them are fucking each other, and it wouldn’t be an issue, even though they’re both younger, because they’re equally balanced with each other. But you and Jacen _aren’t._ If he’s ever not playing, you’ll think it’s your idea, you’ll think it’s a good idea, and you’ll want it. He’ll look you in the eye, suggest something, and _you will say yes._ Hell, you practically did, here. You were about to, until I basically screamed _NO_ in your head. He’s… honestly… off the charts on voice control. On pure talent alone, he’s stronger with that than I am, and Rey, likely combined. He just doesn’t know all the tricks. And, we’re intentionally _not_ teaching him the tricks, yet, because once he knows them, he’ll likely be able to use his voice control on us, too. And if there’s anything the galaxy doesn’t need, it’s a seven… eight…teenager who can get whatever he wants just by asking for it.”

Jon can see where that could go, remembers himself at seventeen, and winces. Then he thinks about looking at Jacen and… _You’ll think it’s your idea._ And he can’t for the life of him figure out if he was genuinely attracted to Jacen or not. Probably. He mentally sighs, imagining Jacen. Definitely. He’s a very good looking kid, a very good looking kid who clearly wanted him, and that’s always been something Jon’s responded well to, but… Would he have done more than just notice… Especially with all the Poe stuff bubbling around in the back of his mind. _Shit. Force users._ “He’s the most dangerous of the lot.”

“Now. We don’t actually know what all a lot of the younger ones can do. And right now, he’s pretty well-balanced. Especially given where he came from and what happened to him. That tattoo on his face is not a fashion statement. That circuits I mentioned _owned_ him. That’s his bond mark. And, I haven’t seen them, but Critt’s thought hard about the scars on his back when we’ve been working together. So, whoever owned him wasn’t kind. Given all that, he’s astonishingly normal, but… He’s still a horny kid who wants what he wants, and… We’re working on helping him get what he wants and needs without _taking_ it from people who don’t necessarily want to give it to him, or _do want to give it to him, but aren’t good for him, long term,_ when it comes to giving it to him.”

Jon takes that point. He nods. Jacen looks like a fun afternoon, possibly even a fun few days, after all there’s something to be said for a seventeen-year-old’s refractory period, especially combined with someone old enough to have some damn stamina, and… If he’d run into Ensign-in-Training Jacen on the F-Deck one evening, and had a look aimed at him like that… Even with the Poe stuff. He rolls his eyes. _Especially_ with the Poe stuff, Jacen would be an _excellent_ distraction from the Poe stuff, he likely would have wandered over, had a bit of a chat, a few drinks… offered to show him his office… Jon rubs his eyes. Okay, he’s really got to stop thinking about that, too, because fuckable or not, Jacen’s certainly too damn young to be a decent relationship. After all, it would be nice to, eventually, fuck someone who’s good for a decent conversation after. Which brings the image of Poe to mind. Which makes him glare at himself and the fact that the universe seems to be filled with good looking men who would be a treat in bed if you could get them into yours. (And then he glares at his mental image of Poe, because he should have been in his bed, but wasn’t, and if it was just about being drunk… and that thought dies as Jon realizes that his mental image of Poe is _in his bed_ and all of his images of Poe are of Poe _in his home,_ and at least, as of this point, that’s not anything he’s done… and that seems worth thinking about, but Kylo’s staring at him, waiting for him to respond, very clearly _not_ responding to any of the things he’s thinking about. So…) “Always a difficult balancing act, and I’m not saying, especially at seventeen, that I was any good at that. Not sure how good I am at it now, other than better at it than I used to be.”

They’re both quiet for a moment after that, watching the stars go past.

Jon nods, getting them back to work. “Tell me about what we just watched and what you thought about it. Is this something we can work with?”

“Rey’ll be here—“

“I want to talk to you on your own. I want to get her on her own, too. Get the gut feelings on both of you, first, before you go shaping each other’s version of it.”

Kylo’s not sure what the value of that might be, but it likely won’t hurt, so… He shrugs a bit. “I don’t know. Some of it looked silly, and… I’m not sure how comfortable I am with people fawning over me,” Because handsome princes, especially when they’re princing about, get fawned at. Not being fawned over seems to be a major aspect of what attracts them to their ladies. He supposes Rey’s more or less the polar opposite of fawning, especially when they first met. “and fights _really_ don’t work that way,” they watched a good six fights, and _all_ of them looked like dancing with swords or blaster.

Of all the things Kylo could have come up with, _that_ wasn’t what he was expecting. Jon’s voice is dry as he says, “Well, in movies, they’re trying to not kill the actors, and they’re trying to make things look good, so _of course_ the fight scenes don’t look right. If we’d watched something with sex scenes you’d have noticed those are off, too, because the actors, generally, aren’t actually fucking each other, and positions that look good don’t necessarily _feel_ good.”

“Oh.  Uh… good.” He’s quiet, and Jon doesn’t miss the way his finger trails from his ear to his scar or the way he chews his lip. He slumps in on himself a little and makes himself talk about what’s really going on. “The men in the movies are _handsome._ They… look like you. And… charming, witty. Like Poe. They… know how to flirt. People flock to them just to be near them. The pretty lady swoons into their arms. And… That’s… not me.”

Jon’s not sure if he should joke or take it dead on. He tries the joke, first. “Like Rey’s never swooned into your arms.”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “I used the Force to knock her out. She wasn’t overcome by my masculine charm.”

Jon smirks. “Yeah, well, as someone who knows dress design, let me tell you that if the ladies in the movies’ real life counterparts swooned when Prince Handsome came her way, it’s because the corset was so tight she couldn’t breathe. He didn’t knock her unconscious with his masculine charm, either.”

Kylo does smirk, a little, at that.  

“The guys on the screen are an idealized version of whoever the real guy was.” Jon thinks. “You grew up out in the middle of nowhere. You ever see the propaganda pieces the New Republic put out?”

Kylo shakes his head.

“Okay, when Rey gets here we’re going to go for a walk, and I’m going to fetch some holovids. I’m going to show you what Luke Skywalker looks like in the movies I saw, and you can tell me if it’s even in the neighborhood of the real guy.” He takes another moment to look at Kylo, and then adds. “And I’m going to sketch you, too. My guess is you’ve got no idea what you actually look like.”

The skepticism coming off of Kylo is so strong it’s about to knock Jon back.

“No. I know what I’m talking about. First of all, you’ve only seen yourself in mirrors, right? Or have you actually seen a photo of yourself? Without the mask.”

“Not since I was eight.”

“All right, so we’ll start with this. Every image you have of yourself is backwards. And then, if you’re like most people, you see yourself as a massive teaming pile of flaws held together by some skin and attitude.”

He nods at that, thinks about flaws, and his complete lack of Princely-graces, and how the men in the movies, even during massive fights, didn’t sweat, and, “Deodorant?” pops out of his mouth before he meant to say it.

Jon blushes, very slightly. “So, I guess Poe mentioned that.”

“Uh huh. You two talking, with each other, about me?”

“Yes, but not the way you’re thinking.”

Kylo raises an eyebrow.

“Look, as best I can tell, a pack of wolves would have done a better job of setting you up to be a human in this galaxy, and… I was asking about your Mom, because Poe really knew her, and… He wanted to know what I meant by you had holes in your education.”

“Oh.” He nods, and then licks his lips. “Look, you remember me saying I wasn’t going to slap you for mentioning things I need to know? I’m really not. I’d… take it as a personal favor to have someone point this sort of thing out to me, before it bites me. And I’d… rather you just said it to me, instead of talking to… well, anyone who isn’t Rey.”

Jon nods at that. “Okay.”

“So…” Kylo says. “What’s missing?”

Jon looks both curious and like he's afraid he's about to leap into a black pit and he's got no idea what's at the bottom of it. “You really want to do this?”

“It’s probably better to just get it all out at once instead of… I don’t know, tripping over it later.”

“Okay. Uh… These are things that I don’t know if they’re intentional or not. Which is actually why I mentioned it to Poe, because I didn’t know if you were doing it on purpose or not.”

“Sure, just…”

“Hair?”

“What about it?” Kylo thinks his hair is fairly nice, or at least Rey seems to like it.

“It’s good hair. The texture and color are nice. Except when I’ve got a meeting with you right after you hit the gym, it always looks clean and soft, but… Most men don’t wear it longer than shoulder length.”

Kylo’s eyes squint at that. “Didn’t you tell me you used to wear yours long?”

“Uh… No. I don’t think I did.” Jon’s got the feeling he must have thought it though, and that’s a bit unsettling. Kylo’s looking at him like he’s not sure if he just dreamed it up, so however he got it, it doesn’t appear to have been intentional. “Though that’s true. But I did that when I was a teenager, and… Okay, first of all, blond, so I was in my twenties before I had anything like visible stubble, and, until I got here, I was slim, but I didn’t have to do any real physical training, so I wasn’t exactly,” he gestures to his current, still lean, but muscled body, “and… I don’t do it now, but occasionally I’d wear some cosmetics, and speaking of inappropriate hard-ons, back in the day I tended to go as androgynous as possible because it greatly increased the chances of me finding someone to fuck.”

Kylo blinks. “You’re telling me that you badly surprised a bunch of men, aren’t you?”

Jon tilts his head a bit. “And two  _extremely_ irate, narrow for women, women. The complete and total lack of breasts and hips _should_ have been a clue, let alone the fact that I’m not exactly a soprano, but not everyone caught it. Long hair, pretty eyes, and it wasn’t like I was difficult to get in your lap if I liked the looks of you. Most of them got over it and decided to… expand their horizons a bit. Some didn’t.”

“Ah.” He touches his own hair.

“No one is going to mistake you for a woman. Hair length is just a matter of fashion for this. Though make sure you get it trimmed every other month or so, and… whatever else it is you do to it to keep it so shiny, that’s good.”

“Rey likes it long.”

“Then keep it long.” Jon’s looking at Kylo’s hand as he touches his hair. “What do you do with your nails? Chew them off?”

Kylo doesn’t roll his eyes. He _asked_ for this. “Not for a decade. I _fight,_ Jon. That often results in bruised hands and less than perfect nails. Rey’ll fix up the bruises when she sees them, but the nails are just short and stubby.”

“Don’t you wear gloves when you do that?”

“The gloves are heat protection. I’ll use them if I’m using my saber or training blade. I don’t for hand to hand.”

Jon nods. “Okay. Once a week, your hands go in the manicure box my mom gave Rey. Get your feet, too.”

Kylo can understand the idea of his hands, people see them, sometimes, when he’s not wearing his command blacks, but… “Rey’s the only person who sees my feet.” He took his boots off when he decided he didn't always need to do his business at the conference table, but he’s still got his socks on.

“Now. Who knows when we’ll be hosting or attending something where people think socks and shoes are rude?”

“There are people who consider shoes rude?” He can’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“Yeah. Anywhere the streets are dirty, people tend to prefer shoes go off before you enter their home.”

“Oh.” He supposes that makes sense.

“Plus, the manicure box feels good. I guarantee you’ll like it.”

He shrugs a bit at that. “After the receiving line we did the massage boxes, and that felt good.”

“That’s basically the same thing.” He keeps looking at Kylo. “You ever think of growing out your beard? You… look a lot younger than most of the men in this sort of position, and a beard may help with that.”

“I _am_ a lot younger than most men in this sort of position.”

Jon can feel there’s something defensive about the beard, hence that response. He decides not to poke it.

Kylo’s fidgeting a little. “You gave me the colognes… Do I… need them?”

Jon shrugs on that one. “Scent really is, most of the time, a personal preference thing. Again, part of asking Poe, I didn’t know if it was intentional or not. Scent… It’s… you know this, instinctively if you haven’t thought about it, but… It’s really tied in with our sexual response cycle, so… I didn’t know if that was something for you and Rey, or if you just didn’t know deodorant was a thing.”

“Until last night, neither of us knew it was a thing.”

“Okay. When it comes to cologne, many men wear it. But not all, and most don’t wear it all the time. Again, except when you hit the gym before a meeting, you… Don’t smell like much of anything, sometimes just yourself. Sometimes her on you.” Jon leans a bit closer to Kylo and inhales. “It’s, generally, pleasant.” Then Jon rolls his eyes a bit as he settles back. “But… unlike a lot of men you work with, I enjoy the smell of male skin and fresh sweat. Uh… lots of good memories attached to those sorts of scents. It's... well, tied into my sexual response cycle, too. So… Take that for whatever it’s worth. In the meantime, use deodorant or hit the sonic when you get done with working out, _then_ go to your next meeting, if looking ragged and smelling sweaty isn’t what you’re going for.”

Kylo opens his mouth, decides he doesn’t have a comment to add, and shuts it.

“We were talking with Rey about this, some. Most cultures have status symbols. Ways to indicate that you’re the guy in charge, or that you demand respect just by existing. To an extent going straight from the gym to meetings is a power move. You’re the guy so secure in his position that he doesn’t _need_ to make nice for the others around them.”

“Put that way, it’s rude.”

Jon inclines his head, knowingly. “That’s kind of the _point_ of a lot of power moves. You’re showing you don’t have to play nice. But it doesn’t have to be that, for example, you _not_ wearing a First Order uniform, and the lightsaber, was also a power move. You don’t need the uniform to command respect.”

“But, because I’m attempting to act like I’m some sort of peacemaker and… secure in my command, I guess, I don’t carry the saber every day now…”

“Exactly. You’re packaging yourself in a way to send certain messages. No saber, no visible weapons, and no guards says you’re secure in your holdings and you can, with your bare hands, level anyone who tries to make things otherwise.

“Just like that, how you take care of yourself is also a collection of status markers. Hands that aren’t bruised and smooth, shiny nails tells people you don’t _have_ to work with your hands. Meaning you’ve got smarts or wealth. You’ve got both, so… Since your formal and command blacks have gloves, it’s less of an issue, but…” He glances at Kylo in his casual clothing.

“But I’m also wearing both of them less, because I’m… Not sure. It just doesn’t feel as necessary all the time.”

“That’s a status marker, too. The man secure enough in his command he doesn’t have to dress for it. That’s a different lesson for a different day, though. Anyway, the colognes I got you, they’re a status symbol, too. Both are fairly subtle, mid-range expensive, and rare enough that most people couldn’t name them at the first whiff. You can get them on this ship. Obviously, I did, but it’s not on the shelf of just any apothecary. Something one out of ten thousand guys can afford to wear, maybe one out of a million would. Just trying to send the message that you’re a man who takes care of his physical body and is willing to spend some money on it, but not so involved in himself as to make a hobby out of his grooming.”

Kylo nods slowly at that. “Some guys do that?”

“People make hobbies out of everything.” He pauses. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, getting all cleaned up can be pleasurable. Treat yourself right, get stuff that smells good to you, and… I mean, you’ve got to do it, so you might as well enjoy it, but… Some guys are _really_ into it.”

Kylo thinks about that for a moment, too. “Poe said there are probably places on this ship that’ll take care of this for you?”

“Oh, yeah. Uh… a lot of the Specs’ll take care of grooming if you like that, too. For some of them, that’s all they do.” Jon shrugs a little. “Having an attractive human hop in the bath with you, scrub you from head to toes, shampoo you, give you a shave, trim your hair, and take care of your hands and feet feels good. And they sell feeling good.” Jon smiles a little. “Add in a massage and a suck or a ride, and that’s a really good evening, you know?”

Kylo nods. “Not with the Specs, but… Rey’ll wash my hair and…”

“So, you know. But, yes, for example, there are shops on this ship that sell nothing but shaving stuff. Soap, gel, cream, after shave, balm, razors, brushes, pre-shave, in every scent, color, slickness, whatever, you can think of. And then, if you like, they’ll take all of your goodies use them to shave you. So, yes, for some guys this is a hobby as well as just getting clean.”

“Ah.” Kylo’s not sure if he wants to investigate that or not. He thinks of something else Poe mentioned. “What’s waxing?”

“A way of getting rid of body hair. I…” Jon’s eyes narrow. “Thought you must have known about that. Your chest is naturally hairless?”

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. “Just about.” Kylo thinks back to Jon post-shower before the Last Night party. “And yours isn’t?”

“No. I like shaving, but I don’t want to do most of my body every day, so…” He stops. “Some cultures prefer men with some hair, some with lots, and some with none. If I’m planning on playing, and don’t know who I’m going to be playing with ahead of time, I take most of my hair off.”

“What’s _most?_ ”

“I like the little line of it from my naval down, and leave my pubes. I feel like adults should have some hair, you know? Most of the time men have some, but I’ve played with some completely hairless women, and… It feels nice, but it’s also sort of distracting.”

Kylo just blinks slowly. Feels nice he can understand. Distracting is completely out of his range of experience. “I don’t really want to know what you’re talking about, do I?”

“You’re probably fine not knowing. Especially since you know the person you have sex with real well, so soft and smooth might just be fun.”

Kylo looks at the floor, and quietly says, “According to Rey the growing back in part is really uncomfortable and itchy.”

“What did she do, shave it off?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, don’t do that. If you want to try, go get one of the Specs to do it.” Jon grins at him. “Seriously, soft and smooth is a treat.”

“Ah.” Kylo’s not sure if he should blush at that, or see about setting up an appointment.    

Jon’s still eyeing him. “The scar.”

“What about it?”

“A decent plastic surgeon could have it gone in probably a few hours, and a day of bacta patches.” Jon can feel how horrified Kylo is at that idea. It hits him like a wall. “And I’ll just never bring that idea up again, shall I?”

Kylo nods, slowly.

They’re both quiet, and then Jon says, “Why am I not ever bringing that up again?”

He’s about to say that Rey put that scar there, but… She also put the one on his shoulder, and one on his leg, and he’s fairly sure he wouldn’t have a full body disgust reaction at the idea of losing them.

 

 

He touches his face, thumb along the edge of his scar. He can’t feel it anymore, it’s flush with the rest of his skin now, but he knows where it is. The line of his face under it is numb, and likely always will be. “Ben doesn’t have the scar. For years… I wore the mask so I didn’t have to catch reflections of Ben. I… never see him in the mirror anymore. That’s… uh… also why I don’t grow my beard out. Master Ben had a beard. Or at least attempted to grow one.” He touches his cheek. “Hair doesn’t grow there.” And the underside of his jaw. “And looks like some sort of diseased rodent down there. Only place it comes in well is around my lips and under my chin. I shaved it off and changed my name when I was twenty-two. But, Ben was still there. Now… I used to feel like I was Ben, except Ben wasn’t anything anyone could ever be. Ben was hope and dreams and… No one could have been Ben. But I was supposed to be Ben. And for a long time, I felt like I was a failed Ben wearing a Kylo suit. So, I kept Ben covered, completely.” He touches the scar again. “Ben’s dead. He has been for a while now. His ghost pops up now and again, and I get to deal with that, but… The scar, the long hair, no beard…” He gestures to his sweater. He's in casual clothing. Most of it is still black. “The black. That’s Kylo, not Ben.”

Jon nods once, and says, “Oh.”

Kylo nods, too. “Yeah. Anything else?” He can feel Rey returning to the room. She’s a few meters behind them, and closing, and now she’s behind Kylo, wrapping her arms around him, and kissing the top of his head.

“Not a bad idea to always have a few mints on hand. I tend to eat one at the end of every meal. Just to make sure I’m not wafting whatever I ate last at everyone.” Jon looks up to Rey. “Great. Okay, you come with me, I want to pick your brain before he gets a hold of it. You,” he looks to Kylo, “go chew through a few more data pads or something. We’ll be back in a few hours.”

Rey looks amused by this. “And what are we doing?”

“Chatting, and I’m going to go find a few things to help convince your man that he doesn’t look horribly out of place among the Handsome Princes.”

Rey smiles at both of them. “That’s exactly what I want to hear.”

Kylo doesn’t roll his eyes. He does look at the stack of datapads he hasn’t put nearly enough of a dent in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a firm believer in the idea that, if there are infinite universes, then some variation on any piece of art will exist, somewhere in sometime. So... Uh, apparently, variations on the theme of Snow White, Spaceballs, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Pirates of the Caribbean exist in Kylo and Rey's world.


	26. Married by Blood, Wedded on Sand

2/13/2

 

Jon and Rey begin the trek to his office. “So, how terrified was he?”

Rey doesn’t quite understand what Jon’s asking. “I don’t think he was terrified. I mean, it is kind of nerve-wracking to keep track of that many kids in that big of a crowd, especially if you’ve never done anything like that before.”

Jon opens and closes his mouth. Kylo with Rugh on his shoulders makes a lot more sense if that was part of kiddo control. “I suppose that’s something of an answer. I was talking about his reaction to the Handsome Princes. I assume if he’d spiked a true fear reaction, you’d have felt it.”

“Oh, yeah. In a heartbeat. Especially that close. That close, you likely would have, too.” She rubs her lips together. To some degree if feels odd to say this to someone else, but… This is Jon. “Inadequate. Ben was… probably supposed to literally be a Handsome Prince of some sort, and, well, he wasn’t Ben, so…”

“Ah… Yeah. And you?”

She shrugs a bit, and a sensation of sort of unsettled annoyance washes over Jon.

He nods at that. “Do you want to talk to me about this?”

“I… kind of want to keep thinking about it. There’s something… I can feel I’m close to it. Could you hear what K’Ahuana said to me?”

He shakes his head. “The K’Aar said he was trying to get you to agree to leave with him, but, all we could make out of it was him handing you the flower.”

She nods. “He… had a few things to say, and I’m still thinking about them.”

Jon’s eyes almost fall out of his head he’s so shocked. He’s deeply pleased that they’ve got a _long_ elevator ride, and they aren’t doing this in the middle of the F-Deck. “You’re not… leaving… right?”

Rey physically jerks; she’s so shocked that he might think that. She’s staring at him in abject horror as she stutters, “What?”

 

 

“Good. You’d bloody well kill him if you left.”

She shoves him. “How could you…”

“I don’t know what he said to you. All I know is that he was offering to take you away, and not just for a vacation.”

“No. That’s not what I mean by thinking…” She just looks at Jon. “How could you even…”

He shrugs a bit at that. “Even good things don’t last forever, Rey. And… That’s the sort of thing you’d want to think about, for a long time, and not necessarily talk to your husband’s closest friend about, you know?”

“I’ll take your word for it. And… No. That’s, not, at all, the sort of thing I was thinking about.”

Jon just looks at her.   

Rey sighs. She doesn’t exactly want to talk about it, but… The only other people she knows, really knows, and feels even remotely comfortable saying something like this to are Rose and Finn, and… somehow this doesn’t feel… right. “What does being married mean to you?”

Jon’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, see that’s not an even remotely comforting sort of thing to ask when we’re talking about pretty boys trying to take you away from home.”

Rey shoots him the stink eye, and when someone with Force skills does that, you _feel_ it. Jon blanches at it.

Then she takes his hand, and lets herself _feel_ Kylo. It flows through her, and Jon nods. He knows the feel of that, and even secondhand, knowing it’s not his, that the person who felt that way about him is gone now, hurts.

“Yeah. Why would I ever want to walk away from that?”

“Because you’re the one with the good sense to leave if you need to. He’ll follow you to the end of the galaxy and back, stupid or not. Burn himself out on it if that’s what has to happen. He doesn’t know when to quit, but you do.”

“But I don’t need to.”

“No, you don’t. Okay… So, I don’t really understand what you’re asking. What did it mean?”

She nods. “It’s different than just living together, right?”

Jon shrugs a bit. “Obviously, on a day in and day out sort of way, no. Wake up, get a shower, eat breakfast… It wasn’t different after you and Kylo married. Not step by step. Not in any tangible way, right?”

Rey nods at that. “But… It was, too. It… felt different.”

Jon nods back. “But it was, too. Under the Empire, Lane and I couldn’t have gotten married. And my family, was, mostly, horrified at the idea. You can legally do it on Coruscant, now, because, of course, that was a New Republic hallmark. Any adult could set up any family, anyway they liked. But, back home, you’re likely to get a clerk who ‘loses’ your registration, or ‘forgets’ to stamp it, or ‘accidentally’ spells your name wrong, or…”

Rey nods. “Passive resistance.”

“Yeah. So, it was different because… Because it was a way to tell my family in specific, and anyone in the universe who disapproved in general, ‘fuck you and your ideals, I love this man, we’re married.’ It was a way to… show it off to everyone. Scream it to the heavens. He was mine and I was his and together we’d made a family.” _From this breath to my last._ He doesn’t say his last vow to Lane. Lane’s last vow to him. The one that wrapped up all the others in a nice tidy bow. He doesn’t need to. Rey feels it.

She nods at him, and gently squeezes his hands.

Jon nods back. “And, of course, unlike just living together… I’ve got his pension, and next-of-kin rights—“

“Taking over his job when he died?”

And Jon’s finally feeling like he’s got an idea of what Rey’s looking for here. What _Lady Ren_ may be thinking about.

Married in _practical_ terms. Married as _rulers. Being_ the Prince’s Lady.

“Uh. Well, first off, no, not exactly. Lane was in charge of Tactical Design, but he wasn’t a designer. He started out in logistics, and… No one talks about that, but it’s a big job. And it’s one of those jobs, that if done right, no one notices, and if done wrong, everything grinds to a halt. He’d been off doing Shipping Logistics, and got that beaten into shape, they promoted him to Major and tossed him over to TD.

“We were limping along. My Captain was an Imperial hold over, probably there because there were no jobs in any sort of military design for ex-Imperials. He hadn’t had a new idea in thirty years, hadn’t had a good one in forty, and didn’t have a handle on where everything was at any given time.”

“And that’s a problem,” Rey says.

“It really is. You can’t make armor if you don’t know where your plate is, and it’s really difficult to send your men out to fight if they don’t have armor because it didn’t get delivered properly.”

“So, Lane’s job was making sure you had what you needed to do your job and then it went to the right places?”

“Yeah. And my job was… well, I was supposed to just be looking for ways to cut costs, which wasn’t difficult because we were using designs that had been cutting edge back in the days of the Empire, but hadn’t advanced from there, and… The First Order wasn’t exactly swimming in guys who could design anything that wasn’t a weapon, so… That’s what I did. Started basic, re-doing the clothing under the armor, stupid basic things like cutting seams a little narrower, or arranging the patterns so you get more uniform out of each piece of fabric, and went on from there.” He shakes his head a little. “Why hire a dress designer to work on uniforms and armor? Because a dress designer, one who works with fabrics that cost tens of thousands of credits per meter, knows how to cut a pattern to get every last square centimeter of that fabric into play, _and_ make the bloody fucking seams match.”

Rey smiles at that.

“And when he died…” He glances at Rey, wondering for a moment if she knows how Lane died. He hasn’t spoken with her about this, before, and it’s the kind of thing Kylo might not have thought to mention. She nods for him to keep going on, so either Kylo did mention it, or she’s felt it off of him. “No one cared if TD was up and running. Not for… months. Who cares about socks if you’ve got a gaping hole in your ship and half of your men are dead? But… I mean. That was the job. And…” He bites his lip. “When search and rescue was done… I needed something to do, and… Between StarKiller and here,” It’s clear from the look on her face that she doesn’t get why he’s mentioning StarKiller. “We were in the process of moving most of the operations functions of the First Order to StarKiller. In a week we lost that and a third of the men who were still on the _Supremacy._ We also lost the entirety of the part of the First Order that was in charge of making stuff to keep everyone in stuff. My whole command chain was gone. There were something like twenty-six ranks above me one week, and then I was the senior commander the next. Didn’t have much to command, though, most of my co-workers and most of my underlings were gone as well.”

“But you rebuilt it.”

“Smaller, sleeker, better. I hate to say it, but… We had a lot of people who hadn’t had a new idea in decades, and suddenly they were gone and I didn’t have to deal with them any more. But, I’m a designer. I’m not a logistical expert. If the tools are in place, I can make anything. I’m less good at making sure all the tools and materials are where I need them. I lucked out, though. Em had a talent for that. And between the two of us we got the production lines up and running again, stole the droids we needed because the rest of manufacturing was just as scattered as we were, and started getting stuff where it needed to go when it needed to get there. Because, trust me, no one cares about socks when there’s a huge hole in the ship, but when the hole is more or less patched, and you’ve got more than two million men, and there have been no new socks for four months, you start to care.”

“You asked me once if… this…” she gestures indicating all of the Order, “was just something he did during the day and told me about at dinner.”

Jon nods.

“Is that… How things worked for you and Lane?”

“Sometimes. Not always. Weeks could go by without our bumping into each other while on duty, because we’d be doing very different things. For example, back then, I didn’t deal with our suppliers. I made stuff, and the stuff that made that stuff just appeared. He dealt with suppliers, making sure that stuff I needed actually showed up. Or we could have days where we worked very closely together. Any new production lines, he had to be right in on that, because that’s a lot of getting the right things in the right places at the right times.”

Rey digests that for a moment before saying, “Ellie’s all in for Kinear’s job.”

Jon nods at that. “I think that’s true. I’m fairly sure he’d say that she’s a large part of how he got to where he is.”

“Your Mom and Dad?”

“I don’t know. She had her own business, which was rare for women on Coruscant. He had his job. I don’t know exactly how that worked, though. I wasn’t around for their marriage. Never saw any of it firsthand.

“I did see the start of a lot of marriages. Lots of _Ladies._ Most of the women we worked for, they understood that they’d put their lives into the service of making the family great.” He thinks about it for a moment. “It’s not… Ellie is all in for Pat’s job. It’s, at least this is the way the ladies understood it, it’s that the job is making sure the family is as wealthy and powerful as possible, and both of them together, divide and conquer to do that.”

Rey nods. “And you and Lane?”

Jon shrugs a bit. “Biological reality. There was never going to be a generation that followed after us, so… We weren’t building up a dynasty. Neither of us needed a sky high rank or the ability to shift the tides of wars by a few whispered words. Just doing our own thing, and making sure there was enough for us to be comfortable with each other. Pat and Ellie… I think they’re trying to make sure that a million generations of Kinears are secure. I know my mom is trying to do that for us. She’s set the business up that there’s always something for us to go back to if we need it. For my nieces, too.”

Rey nods at that, too. “Thanks.”

“Does that help?”

“Some.”

 

  

* * *

They’re half way to Jon’s office when he says, “You mind if I ask why you want to know what I think being married means?”

“No, but it’s still part of what I’m pondering and… Part of being the Prince’s Lady, and… It’s just, a lot. And left to my own devices, I don’t make decisions… or changes fast, so…”

“So, I’ll let you think.”

Another hundred meters down the hallway. Rey’s looking at office after office, well, from here it’s just doors with numbers and letters on them. “Part of being a lightsider is that it’s easy to get stuck. Light nurtures, it cherishes, it holds on… doesn’t rip things up and pull them apart and move onto something new. Not easy.”

She’s watching Jon, fairly sure he’s got more than a bit of empathy for that.

“You said I’m the one with the good sense to leave… I don’t know if that’s true. I’m the one who spent a decade on a planet, begging for people to come back to me, people who I _knew_ never could or would return. But the lie was comfortable, and the rut I’d carved for myself was deep, and… It took a _lot_ to get me out of it, and _more_ to keep me from going back.

“Kylo set his old life on fire, broke away from it, and then did it again.”

“You left him, he told me that.”

She nods. “Twice. Both times because I was needed to protect something else. The second time because… He asked me to join him, rule, but at that point all he wanted to rule was ash. Burn the Resistance, the First Order, the Jedi, the Sith, everything.”

“And the dark revels in destruction.”

Rey nods. “And that was enough to move me to another new path.”

“What path are you on now, Mistress Rey?” His voice is light, but the question is serious. 

“That’s the question now, isn’t it?”

“And do the paths have to diverge? Can you be Order and Maji… Light and Dark… at once?”

“I don’t know.” She sighs. "That's the idea of balance, what I'm teaching the kids. Find the spot between the light and the dark, the point where you can take in both, and stand, secure and stable."

“Easier said than done, isn’t it?”

She nods. 

 

 

* * *

It’s a door. A lot like all of the other doors on this hallway. Right before he opens it, Jon says, “Okay, we’re about to walk into chaos. I just want you to remember this is A: the back door to TD. Normally, we’d go in through the shops, but this trip is long enough without wading through my… Em’s production lines. B: this is _organized_ chaos. We don’t get to unorganized chaos until we get to my office, okay?”

Rey nods. “Okay.”

Jon opens the door, and… Rey just stares. She’s never seen so many… Things, all stuffed into one place. There are fabrics, metal samples, design specs, a half-dozen droids working on… prototypes maybe, there are data pads galore, and in the middle of that is a desk with a dark haired, dark skinned woman, looking down at something she’s working on.

She says to Jon, not looking up, “Hey, Boss, got a new update on short, dark, and handsome?”

Jon smiles at her. She’s still not looking at him. He glances to Rey, and grins huge at her.

“Nah, here to raid my own stuff. Got to find some vids for the Master. I’m showing off New Republic propaganda.”

She’s still looking at her pad, sketching something on it. “He hasn’t seen it?”

“Apparently, not.”

“Holy Ilona, was that man raised in a cave?” She’s starting to look up. “What are yo—“ Her voice stops dead as she sees who’s standing next to Jon.

 

 

Rey watches all of the blood drain from the woman’s dark features, and then she goes leaping to attention, “Lady Ren, I—“

Jon’s laughing, loudly at that.

Rey decides to smile. “Monastery. I understand there were caves, but they didn’t live in them.”

Jon steps forward, nudging Rey along with him, and suggesting non-verbally that she offer her hand. She does.

“Rey, this is my second in command, right hand woman, and most of all, friend, Colonel Emily Furman. Em, this is Mistress of the Maji, Rey.”

For a moment, it’s clear that Emily isn’t sure if she should shake Rey’s hand, or bow, or salute, or curtsy.

“The handshake will do. Jon’s mentioned you a few times.”

“Kindly, I’ve mentioned you, kindly,” Jon adds.

Emily stares for another second, and then in a rush, grasps Rey’s hand. “Lady Ren.”

“Rey. I generally go by Rey.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Or you can call me Mistress Rey, whichever.”

Emily’s standing there, looking frozen, not sure what to do next. “I… didn’t mean, it… About the caves… Uh…”

“It’s fine. You weren’t expecting anyone other than Jon to be here. And I understand that pretty much everyone who grew up anywhere approaching ‘civilization’ would have seen these. Kylo didn’t, nor did I, so… We’re learning.”

Emily nods, looking off foot. She’s glancing at Jon like she wants to smack him for doing this to her, and he’s grinning away as he leads Rey toward his office.

Once they get into his office he says, “All, right this is disorganized chaos.”

Rey just blinks. Looking at this, she could see there was some sort of system in Emily’s office. This is just… Boggling. In addition to everything (minus the droids) that Emily had in her office, there are books about ship design, pictures of palaces, even _more_ datapads, a library on costume design, _more pictures_ Rey doesn’t even know why Jon’s got some of them, because they aren’t as well as she can tell, pictures of things, they’re mostly just colors, maybe just because they’re pretty, and yet more pads, and…

“How do you find anything in here?”

“I’ve got almost perfect visual recall if I’m paying attention. And when I put something down in here, I’m paying attention.”

A person pops a head into Jon’s office. “Grand Marshall,” this one sees Rey, and also snaps to attention.

“Mistress Ren, this is R4-6837, my secretary.”

Rey shakes his hand, and he shivers at the touch. Not in a bad way, just overwhelmed by the idea that _Mistress Ren is standing in front of him._

“News?” Jon asks, as he continues to move through his office picking up data pads.

“Uh. No, not really, sir. Just checking. I’d let everyone know you’d be out today, so if anything’s come in it’s gone directly to your pad.”

“Okay, good. General Threepio is supposed to be sending me the full specs for the Diplomacy division. He tells me that physical plant has sent back the first round of revisions, so I need to see that.”

“Yes, sir. If he has, it went straight to your personal pad. Shall I inquire?”

“No. He’s the most reliable officer on this ship when it comes to getting things done. I’ll check when I get time.”

“Yes, sir. Do you want an update on tomorrow?”

“It’s in my calendar, right?”

“Yes.”

“We’re good.”

The secretary, who looks like he wants to offer to find something for Jon, but knows he’s not going to do it, withdraws back into his part of the office.

Jon pulls out a pad that looks like every other pad, and turns it on. He smiles. “Here we go. Propaganda so sweet it’ll rot your teeth.”

Rey just stares at him.

Jon inclines his head at her. “You’ll see, or at least he will. It’s… so perfect it’s cloying. Especially if it’s not the team you were rooting for.”

Rey nods at that, too. “Why do you have it, then?”

“Aesthetics, and it’s easier to tie into people’s ideals if you know what they are. If it was just me for me, I wouldn’t have anything to do with this. I had to watch most of it in school, and had a hard time then, but… They were good at it, and I’m not so stuck up as to refuse to learn from people who knew what they were doing.”

“And they knew.”

“You’ll see. If you got these as a child, well, as child who didn’t grow up in my home, or if you’d been a supporter of the Rebellion or New Republic, you’d like them. They’d shape your ideals of who your guys were and who they were fighting and why they were destined to win and… Like I said, you’ll see.”

“I’ll see, then.”

 

* * *

Em’s out of her “Lady Ren is in my office, oh holy shit, now what” stupor by the time Jon’s heading them back out.

She’s also, and Rey can feel it, really looking at her, now. Seeing the actual woman, under or behind the image.

“Did you get the Battle of Endor?” she asks Jon, glancing at the pads in his hands.

“Em…”

“Look, I know, but it’s the best one of the bunch of them, so…”

Jon sighs. He knows that, too. As an adult, and one who knows how making things look good works, he knows it's good propaganda. But he's also still the child who had to sit in school and watch a holo in which his father was blown to bits, and watch it as a celebration in which the bad guys were massacred, deservedly. The first time, he sat through it. Every time after that, he got genuinely sick to his stomach, and was able to 'go rest' in the nurse's office. “I’ll mention it and they can look it up later.”

“Okay.” She smiles to Rey. “I know it’s a tender spot for him, but, really of all the propaganda pieces, the Battle of Endor is the one you want to see. It’s, not just good propaganda, but it’s a good story, too.”

Rey nods at that. She can see how Jon responded to it, and she wonders if Kylo will want to see his parents and uncle in the battle that made them heroes. “I’ll make sure we check it out.”

“Do." It's clear Em has no idea why Rey, or by extension, Kylo might not want to watch that one, either. "And… uh… If you ever want to talk about why it’s good propaganda, I studied film before coming here, so… This is sort of in my wheelhouse.”

Rey blinks at that. “You can study… film?”

“Sure. In the core, you can find somewhere that teaches anything. I studied film, how to make movies, how to use cameras, costume design. That’s how I ended up here.”

“You went from Costume Design to the First Order?”

Em smiles a little, and dryly says, “There were a few steps, and possibly a few bad decisions, and a worse relationship or two along the way.”

“She got stars in her eyes and followed a scumbag here. Tested well, and then ended up in my division.”

“Got the stars out of my eyes less than a month in, and decided that this was interesting, so I stuck around.”

Rey’s not sure what to do with the idea that the First Order was _interesting._ That’s certainly not the first word she would come up with to describe it.

“And there wasn’t much back home for you, either,” Jon adds, because he knows that people who joined, and think the First Order were the good guys are going to be a bit much for Rey to swallow.

“True. I had useful work here. There, I had working in a café, trying to get a job doing anything even remotely like what I’d trained for.”

“Were you from an Imperial family?”

Em’s eyes light as she recognizes why Rey’s asking that. “Oh, no. Nothing like Jon’s untouchable status. For me, it was just a matter of it’s a really tight field and a lot of people want into it. Like… You go into accounting or something, and there are billions of jobs out there for accountants. But if you go into film, there are billions of people who want to do it, and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. General Hux already had people making films here, though supposedly I was on the list to move into that division if an opening ever showed up, but,” she gestures around Tactical Design, “until then, someone who knew how to put a stylish and functional outfit together had things to do here.”  

Rey nods at that, not sure what to do with it.

Jon saves her. “And we’ve got to get off if we’re going to get back with time to do this before supper.”

Em nods, and waves to the door. “See, ya, Boss.”

“Bye, Em.”

 

 

* * *

When they’re in the hallway, Rey says, “She calls you, Boss?”

“It’s a joke. Mostly her way of pointing out that I’m _not_ her boss. Even when I was.”

“She doesn’t follow your orders?”

He laughs at that. “Once upon a time, she might have. Now, I offer her suggestions and occasionally make requests, and she’s usually nice enough to help me out with them. If I actually attempted to flat out order her to do something, I’d likely be sincerely disappointed by the outcome. It goes two ways, though, she knows she can sidle into my office whenever she likes and I’ll have time for whatever she needs, too.”

Rey smiles at that.

“Yeah. We’re friends.” 

 

* * *

When they’re back in Kylo’s office, Jon sets up the viewer, so he and Rey can watch, and starts sketching.

“Sit. Watch. When I’m done, you can tell me how close to the real people this is.”

Then he gets working on what Kylo actually looks like.

 

 

* * *

Kylo sits, for a moment. He’s been sitting still too long. He paces. That’s better. Moving is better. Rey sits. They watch, and… Well… Uh… Yeah. Those are things. Extremely pretty things. Involving very pretty people, some of them pretending to be his family.

And, it’s true that his mental image of his parents are people in their mid-thirties, early-forties. And the actors are younger. It’s also true that his mental image of Luke is set when he left to join Snoke, so early fifties.

That said, while it’s true that Luke made sure they all had their own little cottages, he also wasn’t much of a fan of plumbing work, so they had communal showers, which means he’s seen every inch of Luke Skywalker there was to see and he did not, ever, look anything like the guy in the movies.

The guy in the movies is tall. Kylo’s fairly sure that he could look eye to eye with this actor, and if he wanted to do that with Luke, Luke would have needed to stand on something. He’s very blond… And, interspersed with some of the ‘recreations’ there are bits and pieces of real footage. Apparently, when he was young, Luke was truly blonde. By the time Kylo knew him, his hair was mostly brown and gray. The bright blue eyes are… more blue, brighter, but at least somewhere close to right. The actor has more muscles than Kylo can or wants to count, and is wearing a collection of outfits to show that off. Again, communal showers, so Kylo’s seen all of Luke, but he’s only seen all of Luke because of those showers, not because Luke ever wore the kind of clothing where you could see more than his arms and his collarbones.

Jedi masters, even Jedi masters working hard in the fields, do not wear shorts and sleeveless shirts. They really do not wear tunics that tie at the side and somehow keep slipping open so more than half a chest is hanging out. At least, not so much as Kylo ever saw. Granted, at Luke’s school, on a really brutally hot day, it got to 28, so… some of them would strip down further, but Luke stuck to long trousers and at least a tunic (that closed to the neck). Usually robes, too.

Probably felt cool to him, after growing up on Tattooine. Though Kylo never thought to ask that.

He keeps watching. The biggest difference between the real Luke and the actor is the actor looks like he’s not only never had a pimple, but hasn’t ever heard about one, either.

He’s fucking _perfect. Effortlessly perfect._

 

__

 

Luke running as far away as possible to get away from this is making a _lot_ more sense to Kylo. And again, there’s a bizarre twinge of something like sympathy for the man, and that makes Kylo uncomfortable.

But that’s not for today. Watching, learning, seeing… The difference between the image and the person underneath.

There are more images of his mother. Really her. She seems to be comfortable with cameras on her, so she’s giving speeches and rallying people. He knows by the dates on them that some of them are from before he was born, one of the speeches she has to be pregnant with him, and some are after, but he can’t see much difference between them.

He spies his father, or at least, the back of a head and shoulders that make him think that’s got to be Han, in the back of a few of the later images, and he’s doing his best to hide from the cameras. Probably not a terrible idea given how many systems he was wanted in. Just because you’re a hero of the Rebellion doesn’t mean that the bounty on your head in the Sintiliion system dried up.

In the recreations… Taller, brighter, shinier. They never make the wrong decisions, and always look calm and collected. No one gets nervous, no one sweats, no one grunts, and everyone is always beautiful.

Seeing this actually is helping, some.

In fact, as he watches the different films, it occurs to him that the only one of the actors who looks/feels _acts_ like the real person is whomever they got to be Lando, and well… Lando was Lando. Lando could have just played himself in these vids, and likely the only reason he didn’t was he was too busy making sure the Calrissian Corp. was up and thriving.

Lando was warm and charming and good with people, and he successfully ran a huge organization, and…

Kylo purses his lips. Lando was a kind of handsome prince, too. No birthright for it, but if anyone ever _did_ it.

But Lando’s dead, and has been for years, and… Well, if he wasn’t… Kylo’s not sure if Lando would have been willing to sit down and talk with him about how to do this sort of stuff. Not after what he did to Han, but…

He did have a son.

Who also ran screaming away from the family legacy.

So he might not, on sight, loathe him. They got on… okay… back when Lando and Orlac visited. Granted, they were twelve and twenty back then.

And… He and Rey know each other, because that’s the way the Force, or his mom, works.

So… Maybe it would be a good plan to have a chat with Orlac sometime about… how to do and be this sort of person.

Kylo sits back down. He’s been pacing for about an hour, and his legs are starting to tremble. He sighs. He glances to Rey and wonders if she would consider visiting Lando an appropriate use of their off time. Then he glares. The off time he’s burned through for the next three months, and then this would be month four, so month _five_ before they can go do something _fun._

He fucking _hates_ being sick. 

 

 

* * *

“Okay Rey, tell me if this is what Kylo looks like.”

He can feel the way she smiles at the image. See it on her face, but _feel_ it too. Warm and pleased.

And he just _knows_ there is no possible way the image on that page is going to look anything like him.

Jon hands it over and… This is what the guy they’re going to hire to play him if they ever make a movie of this looks like.

“You both like me way too much.”

 

 

* * *

Rey’s wondering if this is how it feels to Kylo when she’s having one of her “I don’t know if I can do this” moments.

It’s so blatantly obvious that he looks just fine, better than fine, that… The fact that he can’t see the resemblance between the sketch and the face she wakes up next to every morning is staggering to her.

And, glancing at the chrono, it’s also something that she’s got to put aside for a bit. The kids likely aren’t hungry after this afternoon, but they still need some adult around to keep an eye on things, and today, that adult is her, so…

“I’ve got to head off.” She kisses Kylo, squeezes Jon’s hand, and then heads off to her own responsibilities.

The kids cook their own evening meal. She’s mostly there to make sure it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of nutritious, it’s cooked properly (no food poisoning), and if anyone gets absent minded with a blade, it gets fixed up, fast.

So, she’s mostly, just there. It doesn’t require too much effort on the average night. Just needs a warm body in the right place at the right time. (And, if they can get Jacen trained up in basic cut healing, they might start putting him on the rotation, too. He’d probably like another sign of being part of the ‘adult’ Maji.)

While she’s keeping an eye on everything, she’s wondering if there’s a way she can make Kylo see how he looks to her. She can remember looking at herself through his eyes, and finding it rather disorienting. Plus, it was just a view of her back. She’s not sure if she can’t offer him a different perspective…

Might be worth a try, later tonight.

Maybe.

 

* * *

The kids are talking about the shows. About who wants to be which hero. Who wants what singing/dancing critter for a pet. Many versions of puppy eyes are being aimed at Rey, suggesting that that was a good learning experience, and that they should really all do that again, soon.

Rey’s thinking about weddings, and how to be the Prince’s Lady.

She’s remembering looking at K’Ahuana as he said, “I would make you a queen.”

“I already am one.”

Lightlings don’t change fast, or easy, but when the ground under her is shifting, solidifying into a new shape, she’s got enough… dark… self… sense to know that she’s got to move with the changes.

Even if it’s not entirely comfortable.

 

 

* * *

What does the Lady of the Order do?

They never talked about that.

Never talked about what this whole married thing meant, beyond not being alone, not any more.

All of the weddings in the shows had vows, promises made to each other, and the future, at least the sketch of a plan for how to behave, and… He made one to her when he put that ring on her finger, she felt it. _I will not be Vader._ She knows how hard that was to commit to, the changes necessary to get there, and if she could, she’d tattoo that on her heart and wear it as a badge of pride.

There were later vows, promises to her, and to their future.

That’s her sense of what being married is to Kylo. It’s the promises he’s made and building the life necessary to keep them.

But she didn’t make any vows to Kylo.

Not in any formal, or informal sense. No… promises, no… plan for a future.

There was _now._ The present, and feelings and intentions. A commitment to how she’d treat him. That’s certainly true. Kindness, respect, gentleness, the things he didn’t get and sorely needed. A home. She’s never articulated it, but it’s there. She would be his home.

Something, someone, warm and stable and welcoming. A place and person who would always be there for him. Someone for whom he’d always be enough.

Light. She’d be his light.

The balm and space he needed to heal.

But he’s moving forward. She gave him what he needed to keep going, keep growing. That’s what a light does. And he needed that. He couldn’t go forward if all he had under him was ash and black. And now it’s her turn. Time to figure out what and who she needs to be, and begin.

Not put a toe in and touch the water.

Not, sort of, kind of, half in, half out…

It’s time to leap.

She knows he’ll catch her, she’s just got to do it.

 

 

* * *

_“Captain, marry us!”_

The kids are picking at supper. Mostly cold sandwiches and fruit. A light meal for fairly full tummies.

She’s not really paying attention to them. She’s seeing that scene again.

It felt _real._

Of course, that’s the movie that wasn’t based on a real story. That’s the one that was completely pulled out of the imagination of its writers.

But of all of them, that’s the one that felt the most like them. Both of them bouncing back and forth, from side to side as the scenes and needs around them shifted, the one constant, each other.

No matter what, Beth had Bill’s back, and vice versa, and that was that.

Another image comes to mind, it’s one of the propaganda pieces that Jon was showing them. Leia was giving a speech. Han was hiding in the back, looking bored, trying not to attract attention. Likely the only reason she and Kylo saw him was they were looking for him.

They didn’t last twenty years. Didn’t end their days watching each other’s backs. Didn’t pull together to protect their son, and the family they tried to create spun off in three separate directions.

Neither of them could bend, neither could compromise, or meet in the middle.

Find their gray.

Rey takes a deep breath, and lets it out.

Kylo’s promised her eleven years, and they’re out.

She can do anything for eleven years, including being Mistress Rey of the Order of the Maji.

Granted, it might not be a terrible idea to sit down and actually figure out what Mistress Rey of the Order of the Maji _does._

 

* * *

Ellie sitting before them, talking, laying out a plan... “And one day, somehow, you two found each other, and you rescued him from the dark/light/power/corruption… fill in the blank however you like, and together, the two of you are breaking with the past, shattering it, and starting fresh and new. That’s the promise of the Order, a fresh start to anyone who wants it, and you two, personally will be the symbol of that. The idea that love frees us from our bonds, gives us the strength to break away from what’s dominated us, and then gives us hope to conceptualize a better life, and the will to go get it. That’s the fantasy we’re going to write up and sell to the entire galaxy, if you two want to claim it.

“And the best way to sell that fantasy, to pick it up and work it for all it’s worth, is the biggest, brightest, most lavish wedding anyone’s ever seen.

“Spruce this place up, make it glitter, and both of you, inside of it, sparkling away, glowing and lovey the way you were at the Last Night dinner. That gives you plenty of reason to tell the story, more reason to show where the story leads, and it will cement the idea of this as a glittering palace in space, centered on the most fabulous love story ever, where people will come to work with each other, and reach peace and accord. You’ll be the living embodiment of conflict turning to love turning to a flourishing society with a vibrant future. We can build this story, and we can sell it, and if you are willing to put yourselves on display like this, we can cement the power of the Order with a minimum of bloodshed.”

She’d said that.

The only question was if they’d _do it._

Lady Ren, Mistress of the Order of the Maji. Her lord’s lady, and a queen in her own right.

And, if Ellie’s right, all they need to do to set this in motion, and, for lack of a better word, introduce, both her, and the Order of the Maji, to the galaxy at large, is the ideal of a romance, and huge, beautiful, glittering, wedding, to tie it all up and sell it to the wider world.

And all she’s got to do is _do it._

 

 

* * *

She’s been in their living room for half a breath when Kylo says, “So, important meaningful conversation is back on the table, isn’t it?”

“It’s that noticeable?”

“I can almost literally see it glowing off of you.”

“All right, then?” There aren’t any plates on their table. “Food?”

“After all that popcorn, I’m not really hungry. There are some sandwiches in the cooler if you are.”

Rey shakes her head. “Not really.”

He’s looking at her expectantly, and then gestures for the comfy chair. He settles in, and she comes to cuddle on his lap. Rey can feel him mentally purring at this. Her in his arms, wrapped around her, and in their home, and how _right_ this makes him feel.

This is his leaping off point, the thing/person he needs to go on being _him._

He’s also being quiet, letting her start this off.

 

 

She’s not sure where to start, but… At the beginning probably. “When you asked to be my husband, what did that mean to you?”

He blinks. He knows, eventually, where she’s going with this, but that’s not the route he was expecting her to take.

Kylo holds her a little tighter, and rolls his lips together. Then he shakes his head a little, because it’s not a _word_ thing. He can’t name it or lay it out. Not in it’s entirety. There are pieces that have words, but the whole is beyond them. He can feel it. So he holds her close, and does.

It’s this. This moment here, of them together, in their home, working on something bigger than both of them, and it’s the past, and the fights to get here, and the changes that made here possible, it’s the future and the hopes they’ll realize and the ones they won’t. It’s a… space… for lack of a better word, where they can be themselves, and make each other better. Her light to nurture. His dark to protect. Her light to feed and grow. His dark to shift their path, keep them moving. It’s the balance that lets them use both, together, to get somewhere they only have glimpses of, but the hope of something important. It’s the life, singular, theirs, that they’ll build, and it’s the life (lives? Plural? There’s a hot, vivid flush of more than one) they’ll create. The generations that will follow them.

She nods against his shoulder. _That._ That’s fine. She’s good with _that._ “And what does Lady Ren do?”

He shrugs. “Whatever she wants to.”

That gets a little eye roll and a shove. “I’m being serious. What do I… do… as the Prince’s Lady? All of those stories were pretty vague about what happens after the vows are said. Even Ellie hasn’t gone there. Big, honkin’ beautiful wedding wrapped around a pretty love story and gorgeous people. Okay. Sure. Game on, let’s do it.” She feels him thrill at that. “But… then what? What’s your image of Lady Ren lady-renning?”

That gets a long, slow blink.

“Do you want me reading data pads, or going over treaties, or…”

The surge of joy at this is so intense it almost knocks her over. Would have, but he’s holding onto her so tightly there’s no possible way she could leave his arms.

It takes him a moment to relax his hold on her, and get his voice together. “I would… like that, very much. But… You’ve got here and the kids and…”

She nods. “I know. It… works in somehow. I can feel that, but I don’t know where the balance point is, not yet.”

“Okay. I… meant it, whatever you want.”

“What do you—“ she’s about to say want, but she knows what he wants, “need?”

“A partner. I can read datapads as well as anyone can, and that’s mostly just… boring. Most of the ones that get to me are informative, letting me know what’s going on in the Order. Things I could make decisions about or changes to, but rarely do, because the people who are sending me the reports appear to actually know what they’re doing, and I don’t. At least, not on most of the things they’re sending me reports about. Or, at least, don’t know enough about these things to see easy ways to make things better. So, that’s… I mean, don’t get me wrong, you can read any datapad you can find, I will not mind at all if you help me clear my backlog, but I don’t _need_ help with that. It’d just be, nice.”

“Okay, so, what does your partner, do?”

“People. Help me with people. I read them well… enough… but they respond differently to you than they do to me, and it’s easier to deal with them when you’re with me. I feel less nervous about dealing with them when you’re around. I know you’re nervous about fucking this up for me, but… I’m nervous about that, too.” A billion flashes of Ben not being _Ben_ enough for his parents or Luke go flowing through him. The eternal disappointment of people with a vested interest in him doing it right, and him _not doing it right._  

She squeezes his hands.

“And… I think you’ll come up with ways of looking at, and dealing with, things that I won’t. I know I would not have come up with that solution to the K’Aran situation. Like Poe, I probably would have settled for the occasional wrong decision is better than no decisions, so…”

“So, formal, _face of the Order_ sorts of things. Alderaan and things like that.”

He nods. “Alderaan, and other things where we’re supposed to be building connections and working on getting people to work with us.” He stops there for a moment, and lets himself _feel_ beyond just the pleasure of this conversation and that she might actually do it.

She catches his Force, and the hints of where it’s taking him. An idea of where the balance point may be. What the Maji are, and do, or could do, as part of the Order. It’s not an image, though there is a feel, more of her and Jacen, and Savarah, maybe… Cassie… Not all of the Maji, just some of them, maybe… The ones with a touch for it…

But it does involve working with people. With… shaping things and ideas.

The Jedi, for a thousand generations, before the Force got fed up with them and began to go wan and dull, used to be negotiators and mediators. They used to seek accord and help people find places and ways to settle their differences.

“Sorely needed.” Rey thinks Kylo’s the one who said it, but it also may have been her voice. It doesn’t matter, it’s true no matter what.

This bit is certainly Kylo, though, “The Order… The idea of it, I hope, is a place where people can come and meet and find accord. Join with us and find the future they want and need. Meet with each other, trade, talk… It’s a… haven… where the fact that I’ve got the biggest fucking guns, and will use them on anyone who tries to break the peace means they can come, be safe and secure in the knowledge that no one will try anything, and find a way to get past their differences.”

“But that needs people who are… good at people.” It’s clear on her face that she’s not sure if that’s her.

“It doesn’t have to be you.” They’re both thinking of Jacen, who was more or less made for something like that. “But it could be. Or it could be you and I, because together we’re better at it, and…”

She’s nodding. “And… That’s the sort of thing Jon does, and Threepio, and Poe, sort of, and…”

“And this is something we can work with. Something we can build. I know we’re starting to get more requests for space, and there are several more deals working their way through the different departments. Eventually, they’ll get here, and someone, meaning us, will greet them and try to make sure that the Order can give them what they need.”

“A place to find their balance.”

“Exactly.”

Rey snuggles in against him. Face tucked under his chin, breathing in the scent of his skin and hair. “Did you… change something?”

“Is it bad?”

She sniffs again. “Different. Not bad, but, like you turned the volume down.” She gets the sense of a vague sort of annoyance aimed at Jon and Poe, but doesn’t poke it.

Kylo says, “We can bump that to later, too.”

“Okay. Right. Ellie suggested the way we’d get people was by making a show of this,” she gestures meaning them. “And… Okay?”

“Okay.” He kisses her forehead. “Be the Handsome Prince,” he manages to say it with a straight face, though it’s a close one on that, “And his Lady. Make us look like the Fairy Tale, and get them to come, work on the overarching goal, peace, prosperity, and basic sentient dignity business.”

“Sure. Just…” She pulls his head down, and kisses him, “One thing. If we’re going to do this big, fancy, cinema style love story/wedding, I want something for us. Something small, something private, something just us.”

“Just us? And what sort of something?”

The image from the movie with the mid-combat marriage springs to mind. The wedding in that one. “A wedding for us. Us, our friends, this… family we’ve pulled together. I want it... Somewhere warm, maybe where we can see the ocean.”

Kylo’s nodding, he can get along with that. “Small, close gathering, no press, no onlookers.”

“Yeah. Private, you, me, our loves. The first real wedding of the Maji. We’ll do something fancy for show to attract people, but a celebration, a real one for us, too.”

Kylo’s grinning, liking this. “On a beach, where water meets land, like Finn and Rose… sunrise or sunset… Maji weddings should happen at twilight. Dark and light mixing together.”

Rey nods, slowly, at that idea. “Sunset. Torches. At the end of our vows, we light them, and spread the flame to everyone else.”

“I can get behind that.” Kylo smiles, and stretches at that. “So, you, me, a bit of beach. Maybe a nice dress and whatever it is you like looking at me in, our friends, some good food, and sunset, and firelight…”

 

 

“Music, a place to dance, the promises we’ve made each other, and the ones we intend to keep.”

He nuzzles against her temple, tilts her head, catches her lips. “Seal it with a kiss.”

“Or two,” she says with a smile. “That’s what I want. The rest of this… That’s a show, that’s… the job… and this is a wedding.”

He kisses her gently. “Our wedding. This is for us, Rey and Kylo, that’s for the Mistress and the Master.”

“Yeah.” 

 


	27. Presents?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay Loves, this chapter is so fucking NSFW that it'll melt your computer.
> 
> See, uh, as you may know, I've got kiddos, and every year this thing happens, whereby, summer rolls around, and suddenly my kiddos are home, all the damn time. Which wouldn't usually be a problem, except... Yeah, you guessed it, I make art in a room where they also go. 
> 
> Eeepp! I mean, they know mom writes stuff they aren't allowed to read, and art often involves naked bodies, but...
> 
> Yeah, so I illustrated the SHIT out of this chapter's sexy bits (and also the next sexy bits) before my computer alone time ran out, and... Anyway, I'm not saying there'll be no new making of hot stuff between now and September, just that my time is, ahem, limited. 
> 
> So, enjoy (in a non-crowded place), and for the rest of you who've also got a pile of kiddos suddenly home, "Happy Summer!"

2/14/2

 

Kylo thinks that Poe had a good idea. Get a present for Rey. She went way out on a ledge for him, and has committed to staying out on that ledge, so the absolute least he can possibly do is find some sort of thing she’d like to show his appreciation.

The problem is, it’s not just that he’s out of practice on presents, it’s that he never was _in practice._ As a young child, there were Lifeday gifts (Wookie tradition) and small bags of cookies and treats were exchanged on Concordance Day (which also, just happened, to be his birthday) so he was, as a young boy, used to getting presents.

So, once upon a time, he was good with presents.

And then he joined Luke.

And the presents went away.

Young Ben was extremely irate when Concordance Day ABY 14 rolled around, and there were no presents for him.

Because Jedi didn’t _do_ presents.

And eventually, he realized that part of not doing presents was about not wanting, not getting attached or excited or… whatever. And part of it was, while it was true there were a collection of people who would happily get Ben Lifeday gifts, M’Gll and several of the others _didn’t_ have those people.

And Luke didn’t want some kids getting to his place and getting goodies from home, and others getting nothing.

Leia eventually wormed her way around it by sending gifts for the whole group of them, and if they happened to be the sorts of things Ben liked, oh well. He didn’t resent her, too much, too often, for it. Mostly just when Concordance Day would roll around. After all, his father was a fucking _smuggler._ It’s not like getting a little lifeday present to him wasn’t an option.

 

 

* * *

His first idea for a present is repainting his room. He thinks about that, fairly pleased for a few minutes. She’s mentioned she likes all the colors, but he knows she’s likes greens, too, and it’d probably be a nice surprise to come home one night, and everything is bright and open and…

He’s looking around.

His eyes narrow.

Lots of green might be nice, but he doesn’t know what greens, and… Maybe the all black furniture could be… not all black. Still some black, after all, it’s his home, too, but…

He’s standing in his room, looking around thinking that, if this is going to _work,_ they should probably do it together.

(It’s a few hours later when it occurs to him that doing something he was going to do anyway likely doesn’t count as a present. That said, he does ask C8 if they’ve got a book or something of paint colors and gets told that physical plant can replicate any color they can be shown. So, no, there’s not a _book or something._ )  

 

* * *

Instead of having lunch brought to him and working through it, he decides to head up to the F-Deck. He knows for a fact that there is food up there, and likely things that could work as presents.

As he’s strolling around the F-Deck, his do not recognize spell up, _things_ all around him, and a handheld pasty doing lunch duty, it also occurs to him that presents are easier if the person you’re getting one for is a _thing_ sort of person.

There are things, in shops, all around him.

And he supposes that Rey would like a lot of them. As much from the novelty of getting a present, and for something _new_ than for any desire for any of these things.

He wouldn’t mind buying many of them, again, because it’s _new,_ and it’d be a gift, from him, to her, but…

None of them are really leaping off the shelf, yelling, _Buy me for Rey! She’ll love me!_

 

 

* * *

He wonders a bit if getting some sort of sexy pajamas for her qualifies as a present.

For him, probably.

He lets himself imagine her in sexy pajamas. Okay, definitely a present for him.

Then he wonders if she’d be interested in seeing him in sexy pajamas. That doesn’t hit him wrong. It’s certainly a thing he could do. And that’d… be significantly more likely to be a present for _her._

She liked his silky white shorts… Maybe something, not exactly like that, but… He spends a moment thinking about it, fairly sure there has to be sexy pajama-type-things for men, but his mind isn’t exactly bubbling over with ideas of what they might be, other than his current pajama pants, but in a sheer, silky sort of fabric.

He’s looking around the F-Deck. He knows for a fact that there are places on this ship, on this deck, that sell sex-oriented things. One could likely get sexy pajamas at a place like that. For both of them, maybe… (After all, just because he’s getting a present for her doesn’t mean he can’t get one for him, too…) He’s just… continuing to look around… has no idea _where._ Nothing within his view has anything like what he’d consider sexy clothing in it.

And he’s got another twenty minutes before he’s got to be in his office.

His eyes narrow in frustration. The datapad that has the _Supremacy_ directory is also back in his office. So, whatever else is true about this plan, it’s not happening today.

As he thinks about it, he does know where the adult section on the _Finalizer_ is, and… An extra layer of anonymity doesn’t bother him at all.

Tomorrow or the next day. He’s got to have at least an hour that doesn’t have something else scheduled in it. Lunch if nothing else.

 

* * *

Still, even sexy pajamas… They don’t feel like… enough.

He suspects locating and trying them on, and obtaining them will be fun, and he has a feeling showing them off will be more fun, and that’ll be good, but…

She’s shifting her whole life for this, and a concoction of silk just doesn’t seem to be quite on the level of that.

Granted, he’s not sure anything, other than making sure he’s _worth it,_ is.

 

 

* * *

They’re in the bath, relaxing a bit in the time between dinner and bed, when he says, “So, if we were to paint this room, what color would you like?”

Rey blinks at him. “Uh…”

“I’ve been told that Physical Plant can produce any color they can see, so… Our place on Lirium is white and cream mostly… What… should this room be?”

Rey sits up from her lounging float and looks around. He can feel her thinking.

“And… I don’t know, but… Maybe the furniture doesn’t have to be all black, either. I’d like to keep some of it black, but…” He thinks for a moment. “Like… I’d like the bed to stay black, but maybe the sheets and blankets could be something else.”

Rey nods at that, and continues to look around. “Maybe… The floor and ceiling could stay black, and the bed, and wardrobe… Maybe new colors for the bath and table and chairs?”

“We could do that. Any… ideas, for colors?”

She half smiles and half winces, and he can feel what’s going on. She’s excited at the idea of bringing colors in here, but she’s never picked colors before. Everything in their home in Lirium is something Chewie picked out, or something he brought and left. She’s never… made a home, other than in the most literal sense of having physically built one.

“Any color they can see?” Rey says to Kylo.

“Yeah.”

“There were a few shops on the F-Deck that sell pictures. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, we could go look at them, and if one of them has colors we like, we could get it and use it to figure out what goes in here.”

He pulls her close to him, and kisses her soundly. “I like that.”

 

 

* * *

2/16/2

 

When Master Ren and Mistress Rey of the Maji spend and evening perusing the art galleries of the F-Deck, the gossip goes wild.

Apparently, Mistress Rey likes images with bright colors, vibrant contrasts, sharp geometric shapes, and non-photo realistic images.

Master Ren, apparently, has more classical tastes, leaning toward landscapes of forests and fields, sunsets over oceans, still lifes of exotic flowers, and human portraits and nudes, in black and white.

Impressionist landscapes are, apparently, the sweet spot where both of their tastes converge.

Rene D’Vallier will be informed, in a few months, when he checks in with the gallery, that his Sunset Over Vayria was purchased by the Master, and he will tell anyone and everyone who is capable of listening about _that._

And one day, over tea, he’ll chat with one of his friends, who’d gone to art school with him, an Orlac Calrissian, who will not actually spit his tea out when he hears that the once-upon-a-time Ben Solo, now Master Ren, is, apparently, buying _art._

 

 

* * *

2/18/2

 

In his office, with most of his furniture, because apparently, painters like to take the easy to move stuff out before applying paint to most of the surfaces of your room, Kylo isn’t working.

He’s not entirely sure how, exactly, he agreed to a mostly beige and coral colored room with a few blue accents (With black floors and ceiling.) but the picture is pretty, and he likes it. And that’s most of the colors in the picture. Something in his bones seems to resonate with deserts. He thinks that’s something to do with Vader. He hopes it’s not vestiges of Luke. There’s the sense that Vader… Anakin, said… something about deserts, but… Anyway, he’s woolgathering.

He looks at the data pads that are not, miraculously, getting to be a smaller stack. Apparently, he’s been woolgathering a lot today.

Part of it is the disruption of the painters.

Part of it is the niggling idea of sexy pajamas, and sort of a sense of… calling Rey to him, room done, everything new and him all laid out…

He grins at that idea.

And the grin falls as he looks at all of those pads.

He makes himself a promise. Tomorrow. They say the paint will be wet and smelly today, and not to be in there until tomorrow, so…

Tomorrow. Today he’ll get these bloody pads done.

Tomorrow, Operation: Break In the New Bedroom.

He _likes_ that idea.

* * *

2/19/2

 

Kylo is beyond intimately acquainted with Rey’s body. He knows her curves and flats, better than he knows his own. He is also aware of the fact that, should he attempt to buy some of the pretty silky things he’s dreaming about putting on Rey, he will need to get them in the right size.

And though he is, as previously stated, beyond intimately acquainted with her form, he is also beyond nebulous on the idea of how that translates into clothing sizes, so… As his free hour draws near, and step one of Break In the Bedroom is about to get into play, he realizes that he’s going to need some help on this.

He comms Jon.

“Jon, if I wanted to buy clothing for Rey, what size is she?”

“What kind of clothing?”

Kylo blushes a little. Right, there are _kinds_ of clothing, and it’s likely that what he wants will have specific measurements. “Uh… The sort you don’t get to see.”

Jon snerks. “Uh huh. Okay. Check your personal datapad in about five minutes. I’m sending you a collection of numbers. Take them with you, and show them to whomever helps you.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“On this ship, no. But I have an idea of where I need to go on the _Finalizer._ ”

He can feel how amused Jon is by that. “Okay, then. Have fun.”

Kylo’s about to comm off, when he realizes what he asked for, which is not exactly that present _for Rey,_ and then he says, “Uh… what size am I?”

He can feel Jon vibrating as he laughs silently on the other side of the comm. “That’ll be in the note I’m sending you, too.”

“Thank you.”

 

 

* * *

Kylo is aware of the fact that there are shops that sell sex-oriented things in the same way he’s aware of nebulae. He’s seen them, from afar, in passing, but he’s never been in one.

When he was stationed on the _Finalizer_ he visited the Specs a few times. So, he knows, in that he walked by them, that there were shops near the brothels, and those shops sold _things,_ and that’s likely the kind of place that sells the sorts of thing he’s interested in.

Probably.

He never actually went in one. He did, while wearing his mask, look very intently at several of them over the years, but his life never slotted into any sort of shape where there would be a reason to enter one. After all, anything that might be in one of those shops was something he likely wasn’t supposed to play with. Just visiting the Specs was a sign of weakness, one he’d indulge when he just couldn’t stand _not_ indulging any longer. Anything in one of those shops would have been… He’s not sure how to even begin to think about it. Wrong. It would have been wrong.

It’s not wrong, now.

So, he’s readying himself for Operation: Break In the New Bedroom, he keeps thinking of all the sorts of things he might want to see Rey in. Granted, that’s not the goal of this mission, but… Well, he’s got _ideas_ of what he might want to see Rey in. He doesn’t exactly have anything in the ways of ideas of what he might put himself in.

He strips out of his command blacks and into Padme-who-is-now-Ren, and pulls his hair back into a haphazard knot.

He licks his lips. He’s got his Ben Amidala credit stick. He’s got his trader gear on. He pulls up his do not recognize spell and layers a quick do-not-see over top of it. He’s ready. He ports himself directly to the hallway with the Spec shops on the _Finalizer._

He drops the do-not-see. He knows he’s going to need help for this mission, and it won’t work if they can’t see him. So, right here, right now, he’s just Ben Amidala, in his off-duty wear, having a bit of a stroll in the R&R section of the _Finalizer._

It’s pretty similar to how he remembers it. Or, at least it looks similar. It feels different: crowded, randy anticipation and lust threaded through with drunkenness and the relaxed glow of recent release. He can’t remember it feeling this way, and he doesn’t know if he had his own empathy shut down so far he couldn’t pick this up the last time he was here, or if Snoke had it shut down to keep him walled off from this.

Either way, he’s appreciating it now. Just being here is giving him a lift and making him feel good. That likely makes sense, he’s in the middle of at least a few hundred randy people. He’s wryly thinking about how taking Rey here will feel, and… yeah, probably really good. 

They run hot enough for each other, and with this background current of everyone around him… Yeah… That’d be _good._

Maybe one day they should come here, get worked on together. Getting really rubbed down again is something they should do, soon. Hell, he’s the fucking Master, he can probably get a few Specs to come to them. Though if they come to him, they’ll miss out on how this feels.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want them to miss out on how this feels. It’s not exactly that glow from Paige being born, this is decidedly and intensely more sexual, but it is similar in the euphoric feel of it. The connection to the literal, physical, root of life.

He heads towards where he remembers there being a shop. One not selling food or drink. And, it takes him a few moments, but then he finds it. He lingers outside of it for a moment, looking at the blatant double entendre of a name and the blacked-out windows, debating getting Rey and doing this with her, but…

He does want to surprise her. And he’s fairly sure it’ll be okay on the other side of the door, but if it’s… gross or seedy or unpleasant, he doesn’t want to drag her into it. And if he’s horribly misjudged what’s in here… Well, he doesn’t need to drag her into that, either. And if it makes him blush too hard, well… Maybe next time he won’t blush too much.

He steps in, and… Okay… His eyebrows don’t go shooting up, but only because he’s making them stay put. If they had their way, they’d be at least a centimeter above his hairline.

Uh… So… yeah… Pretty, silky things. Uh… Yeah… He’s glancing around at _things,_ and _other things_ and… he’s honestly not even sure what the fuck _that thing_ is, let alone if it’s designed for humans, which isn’t to say he knows what the other stuff is, but he can at least, sort of, guess, but that’s…

A flash of emerald green catches his sight from his peripheral vision. There, the pretty, silky things are _there._

He turns 90 degrees and heads directly toward the silky stuff. The… oh… Uh… He squints a bit. Well… They’re… triangles of fabric, with a sort of band that goes around the waist, and another string in the back, and… He’s fairly sure that _The Salty Seaman_ isn’t precisely a subtle pun, so he’s expecting this store to cater to _men,_ but… Those look like something more for Rey than for anyone shaped like him.

He gets closer, and gets a better view of what caught his eye, and… Right. Okay, well… While he may not know what size Rey is, he knows her shape down to the millimeter and she’s not built to fit into the… he’s going to call them panties, but… They appear to be designed for people with penises, so that’s not what he’s looking for either.

Probably. His eyes narrow a little as he stares at them, chewing his lip. He knows how much he likes panties on Rey. Her usual shorts are good, too, but… Little, snug silky things are better, so…

He was thinking more like… silky pajama pants, or like his white shorts, and these are…

Not like that. At all.

But… she might… like them.

“Can I help you?” The woman running the shop is standing next to Kylo, looking at him with a pleased expression on her face. “I’d guess you’re probably going to need a large.” She looks a little longer. “Eh… maybe a medium. Your waist is pretty trim.” She checks his butt. “Or not. Maybe a medium on a thong and large for anything with a back. Most of the fabrics are _stretchy_ , after all, a pouch like that shouldn’t be _too constraining,_ but you might want to try things on first.”

Kylo blinks slowly and rubs his lips together. “I’m looking for my wife,” goes tumbling out of his lips.

She’s still grinning at him. “Great, what does she like? Everything all up front and packaged up nicely,” she gestures with her hands in a way that makes him blush from the tips of his ears to his collarbone, “or more discrete and tucked under.”

He bites his lip, makes something of a whimpering sound, and manages to say, “Shorts?”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” she turns and takes him a few steps further into the store. His eyes trace across another shelf, and… It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it, “Are those bras?”

“Not exactly, but some men like a little extra support, and some just like to feel dressed up and pretty.” She eyes his chest. “You’d certainly fill one out nicely. Do you want to do a fitting?”

He can feel she’s just fucking with him right now. He doesn’t need a fitting, they only come in four sizes, and he’s obviously the largest of them, but she is enjoying his blushes. Apparently, most of the clientele she deals with in here are a little more experienced and or jaded with this sort of shopping trip.

“No.”

“No problem, if you change your mind…” And she’s at a series of shelves with shorts in every color and fabric and shape that he’s ever imagined. “Okay, top shelf, those are tighter and’ll often have a built-in pouch for extra support or showing off. They get looser as they go down, and plain boxers are on the bottom.”

Kylo nods. “Pajamas?”

“Next shelf over.”

“Thank you.”

“Great, just holler if you need anything.”

He gets a moment of looking at the shorts before she’s back, handing him the emerald green panties. “If your woman has eyes, she’ll like you in those.” He gets hit with a very intense, and apparently desirable, image of him in said panties. The lust is in her mind, but she doesn’t let it get to her face or voice because she thinks it’s ridiculously cute that he’s doing this for his wife, as she says, “The color’ll be good on you, and they’ll show everything off.”

He blinks and nods. Well, the way she’s imagining him in them is heating her up in pretty much exactly what he’s hoping for Rey, so… “Should I… Try them on?”

“Probably. Changing room is in the back. Keep your shorts or whatever on. It won’t be exact, but it’ll give you an idea if they’re even close to fitting.” She heads off for a moment, grabs another one of the emerald ones. “Okay, you’ve got large and medium now.” Then she grabs a cobalt blue, and vivid violet. “Those’ll probably look good, too.”

He’s holding them, not sure what to do, so he says, “Thank you.”

She’s grinning at him.

Kylo mentally rolls his eyes, and then, quietly, under his breath, while waving his hand says, “You need to do something else right now.”

“I need to check the stock,” she says and wanders off.

He stares at the tiny bits of silk in his hands. They feel nice. Like his other silky shorts, which he’s wearing right now, they’d probably feel really good… on him.

They’re really tiny though. Really. Okay, he’s not… huge. Not like some of the guys in the pictures they look at together, but… He’s not sure how all of him will fit in something like that. And, while it is true that he kind of likes it when Rey’s got a bra that some of her chest slips out of, he’s also fairly sure that having part of his shaft sticking out of this, especially if he’s not hard, is just going to look stupid.

She’s not looking at him, having become absorbed in rearranging a display at the front of the store. He tries to snug his fist into the pouch, and is surprised to see the fabric does stretch to accommodate it. He presses in a little deeper, pulling the pouch up to his wrist, and… Yeah, they’re _really_ stretchy.

Well… It’s really _not_ what his mental image of sexy pajamas was, but… Rey’d probably like them. Or maybe just be amused. He’s not sure how one goes about showing off panties like these. Does he just stroll out of the refresher in them? Yank off his trousers? Go to bed a little before she does, and just lounge around in them until she comes in…

He’s getting ahead of himself. Try them on. Make sure they don’t look frightfully stupid.

In the changing room, with the first of them on, he’s feeling a bit silly and a lot turned on. Silly is probably because he’s got his shorts on under the panties, and, well, that just looks stupid, but… He can imagine how it’d look without the shorts and… Well, she wasn’t kidding about ‘show everything off.’

He’s… especially in his current state of half-hard, on display in a way he just can’t get on his own. And, again, without shorts, he can kind of imagine, at least for a little while, the thong aspect of this might feel good. Probably be annoying for more than a little while, but for playing… He doesn’t mind a little extra stimulation back there.   

So, the only real question is, would Rey think this was sexy?

He traces his fingers over himself in those emerald green panties. Yeah… That feels good. And she’s certainly never laughed at anything else he thought was sexy. At least, not in an embarrassing way.

Sooo… He’s got credits.

Worst comes to worst, they end up living in the back of his underwear drawer.

He gets all three shades.

On the way back to the counter, he notices that the lady who keeps the shop is still fascinated by her display re-arranging, and he’s got a little extra time, so he wanders into the aisle that has the dildos.

There are a _lot_ of them.

An entire aisle of nothing but dildos.

In every shape, size, color, and texture he’d ever imagined, and a whole lot he hadn’t. Apparently, he’s not the only man interested in playing with something like this.

He winces a bit, but, in a sort of morbid fascination, he does pick up the one with the head bigger than his fist, and sort of stares at it, wincing harder, before putting it back down. He doesn’t pick up the one with scales. He does idly wonder how one goes about cleaning something like that.

A few steps down are what he considers _normal_ sized ones, meaning a bit smaller, or at least thinner around, than he is. Length doesn’t matter much to him, after all, they can use as much as they like, and just hold the rest, but girth seems less negotiable. Likewise, these are all _smooth._ Some of them are human colored and textures. Some look like they’re made of plexiplast or glass.

He actually really likes the glass looking ones with the swirls of colors within. He’s not tentative when he picks one of them up. It feels good in his hand, heavy for it’s size, smooth, cool.

He put that one down and looks around for a fairly narrow one, because when Rey uses her fingers on him, she normally does… one? two… at most… he thinks, and that kind of burns, in a good way, but burns still, and the easing into it is not exactly comfortable, so…

He’s eyeing a few of them, when he remembers Rey talking about playing with one, on the receiving side of things, and possibly she’d want something bigger than two of her fingers, because… well, again, _he’s_ bigger than the dildos he’s contemplating, so… 

Which gets him also thinking about what she’d do with it. If he were there… It doesn’t take his brain too long to figure out a few options, and require him to shift himself around in his trousers because his shaft really likes the idea of both of them sucking each other, and him using a dildo on her while he does it. Just the mental image of the idea’s got his shaft hard enough he can feel his pulse in it, and he’s reaching for one of the glass ones, which are pretty and feel nice in his hand, when it also occurs to him that, like their home, maybe Rey would like to be part of picking one of these out, and… There are no straps here. No belt, and if she’s going to use it on him the way the lady in the video did…

Okay, this is not the place for that shopping trip.

But, eventually, both of them together… He grins at that.

 

 

* * *

At the counter, he’s waiting while the lady tallies them up, looking at a basket with a collection of thin strips of leather with a lot of snaps… They’re… oddly shaped. Obviously, they go around _something_ but he’s got no idea what.

Okay, he’s got an idea, but he can’t imagine _why._ Finally, he says, “You sell leather bracelets?”

She giggles at that. “Uh… Well, I suppose you could wear them around your wrist.” She glances at him. “Well, not your wrist.”

He bites his lip again. He was right about where they go, probably. “Okay… where are you supposed to wear them?”

She’s smiling at him. “They’re cockstraps.” And again, he’s fairly sure she’s not talking about male chickens. “You wrap them around the base of your cock, under your stones, and snap it shut.”

He winces a little. “Why?”

“Blood can go in, but not get back out until you release it. So, everything gets harder, fuller, more sensitive, but it’s harder to climax with one on. I’ve been told it lets you feel on edge a lot longer than without one. Partners tend to like them because things are bigger and last longer. And some guys think they look nice. Everything big and proud. And a lot of older guys like them because it makes it easier to stay hard once they get that way.”

“Errr…”

She can’t keep her eyes from dropping to below his waist, but she is quick about it, and then says, with a smirk, “Yeah, I know, not an issue for you.”

He blushes harder, wishing he’d worn a longer jacket.

“Okay, so that’ll be 62.58.” She’s looking at him, waiting for his credit stick.

He grabs one of the straps, too.

She grins at him on that one, too. “Good choice. Uh… Don’t keep it on for more than half an hour, though.”

“Why?”

“Same reason you don’t want a too tight ring on for too long. For a little while, it’s fun. For too long, you’re looking at gangrene. That’s why this kind has the snaps, you can get it off easy.”

Kylo blinks slowly. “There are ones without snaps?”

“Oh, sure. The plexiplast ones, like these, are pretty safe. They’re stretchy, so just take it off. The metal ones can be tricky.”

He blinks again. “They make metal ones?”

She gestures to a different shelf. “Like I said, some guys like how they look. Good time jewelry. Some of them have locks and… well, new meaning to the term marriage band,” she smiles at him, glancing at his ring, “right?”

Kylo’s got _no idea_ what to do with that. He nods, and finally says, “How much?”

“Oh, right.”

A minute later, he’s got a new total, and a small bag that he’s tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket.

 

 

* * *

Two stores down, he’s found the land of pretty, silky things for women. And he’s not blushing, at all. He really is wishing he’d worn a longer jacket, though.

 _Everything_ he sees he wants to buy and put on Rey. The fact that she keeps him in line when they go shopping together is likely important. Because right now, without her, and with his credit stick, he’s just grabbing things, running his fingers over them, thinking of them on her, and peeling them off of her, and kissing her though them, and the feel of the silks on his skin, and shit, there’s another one in a new color, and… ooohhh that one’s translucent, and… oh my… that one has sparkles… and… ohhh… sooo soft… and…

He’s irked to think about it, as he’s grabbing yet another piece of ridiculously light and soft fabric, but, just possibly, the Jedi might have had something with wanting things can make it easy to make stupid decisions, because right now he _wants,_ but if he buys all of this, Rey is going to at least mentally smack him for a monumentally stupid decision.

That said, he’s thinking of their eventual trip to Canto Bight, the one they likely should see about, eventually, putting into play, once he’s got some fucking free time again. He sighs. But once they get there, he’s winning at least one big hand, and putting that into his, ‘buy pretty things for Rey’ fund. He sees a concoction of light pinks and iridescent blues and… _a big hand._

It’s true that he wasn’t great at math as a kid. He’s still _not great_ at math, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do enough basic arithmetic to come up with a decent estimation of the cost of the massive pile of silky things in his arms, and sigh…

If he brings all of this home, she’s not just going to smack him upside the back of the head, she’s going to do it with her staff.

He makes himself put _most_ of them back. He keeps the black stockings, and the silk nightgown, and the silk robe, and the scarlet silk gloves, and the completely, utterly impractical shoes that he’s not even sure humans can walk in, but for some reason he _really_ wants to see her wear with the stockings, and apparently stockings need something to keep them up, so he’s got to get them, and… okay, he grabs some panties and a bra and… Starts making himself put things back again.   

He’s not the only person in the shop, so he doesn’t immediately end up with a sales clerk right next to him, but eventually, “Are you finding everything?”

“And then some. Finding isn’t the problem, not buying too much is.”

The clerk laughs at this. “First time buying pretties for your sweet?”

“First time getting these kinds of pretties.”

“Yeah, you’ve got the look of a man who can’t decide which one of the candies in the store he wants most.”

If Kylo had ever bought candy before, that would have likely been an apt metaphor, as it is, he thinks that’s likely true, he just doesn’t _know_ it’s true.

“Do you… need help narrowing it down?”

He sighs a bit, looks at his most recent attempt to get down to just a few things, and then nods, “Probably.”

“All right, what does your…”

“Wife…” And again he gets hit with a wave of _how cute._ It’s a really bizarre sensation to have strangers staring at him, approving, of his attempts to be sweet to his lady. He assumes most of the men in a place like… He glances around. He’s the only man in the store. Oh.

“What does your wife like?”

“We’re figuring that out.”

“Okay. Sizes?”

He rattles off the numbers he memorized from Jon’s note.

She’s nodding. “Okay, so, she’s slim, small chest, well balanced, her waist is trim, but not that much smaller than her chest and hips… She’ll look good in pretty much anything, and you can get very light and sheer tops because she doesn’t need a lot of support.”

“That sounds like you’re saying her size isn’t exactly narrowing it down.”

“Yeah, sorry.” She looks at the pile of lingerie in his arms. “And, let me guess, me saying, ‘Well, what do you like,’ isn’t going to narrow this down, either?”

“I like this entire store.”

She cracks a wide smile at that. “Oh, you’re fun.”

He sort of half-smiles at that, not sure what to do. He doesn’t think anyone, ever has called him fun before.

“Let’s try this, if you don’t mind an invasive question, is this for wearing or playing? Lingerie that looks pretty can feel good. Lingerie that looks particularly sexy often isn’t all that comfortable for longer term, or, at the very least, it can be distracting.”

Ultimately, he was kind of thinking both, but if it’s a one or the other sort of thing… “Playing?”

She nods at that, and begins taking things out of his arms. “Most of these are comfortable, and pretty, and easy to wear, so they aren’t bad choices, but… They’re not the little sleek number you put in your purse and step away to put under your date night dress just as you’re about to go home.”

He’s got no idea what a date night dress is, but from context, he’s thinking he might want to get Rey one of them, too.

She starts laying out the pieces he’s got left, putting them into outfits. “Given what you’ve got here, and your wife’s shape, you’ve got two ways to go. These,” she gestures to bra-like thing that he thinks would cover Rey to the bottom of her ribs, and a pair of panties cut into a sort of deep v, “will make her bust and hips look curvier. Give her more of the illusion of an hourglass figure.” He can feel what she’s thinking of with that. “Or,” and here she’s got the shoes, the stockings, the things that keep the stockings up, and a pair of panties so tiny they make the ones he got himself look voluminous and roomy. She eyes the panties and the shoes, shakes her head, scoops everything but the shoes up, and says, “Go play with the perfumes. Pick something that smells good to you. I’ll be back in a minute or two.”

He blinks at that, hadn’t even noticed there was a scent section, but locates it, and… FORCE! There are like fifty different types of scents on this wall and… He’s got no clue what to even begin doing with them.

It’s almost worse than the pretty clothing, because now he wants to rub all of them on Rey and see how they smell, and then make sure she rubs all over him, so he can smell like this, too, and…

The bath. The first time he saw her somewhat naked, she was in a bath, and the water was blue, and it smelled of flowers, and… He’s got no idea what. Floral, blue. Some of the bottles here are blue, so he goes and sniffs them.

None of them are the same, but, there’s one… It’s not a floral. It’s… got flowers in it, but that’s not the main thing going on in this blend. It’s light, and airy, and there are flowers, and under or through that, something warm. Sunshine near a garden, maybe…

It’s nice, and he’s liking it, but…

Orange. Orange and browns, and a sort of dusty burnt color. He reaches for that one. Heat, dry, warm spices and hot air, sunshine, but this is the deep, lazy sunshine of full summer. This is the sun that lives in the tan of her skin, and the freckles that dot her shoulders. There is something orange about this, and not just the bottle, a vague undercurrent of citronen, and something that makes his mouth feel warm, like he’s taken a bite of spice cake and a sip of coffee…

This one. This one is coming home with him.

“Desert Sunset. That’s a good choice. A lot of people like that one,” she says as she’s back. “Come on. Let’s see if you like this.” She leads him back to the counter where the shoes he picked out still are. There are stockings next to them, but these apparently hold themselves up. They’re black, with a thin forest green ribbon up the back, tying in a tidy bow at the back of each leg. Apparently, it’s clear from how he’s looking at them, that he’s not sure how they stay up. “The stockings have a band at the top that keeps them up.” Kylo nods. The shoes he picked were black, shiny leather with a high, forest green heel. The stockings are also black with the ties in green. With them is… He’s staring at it, unable to figure out what it is for a moment, and then it suddenly snaps into place in his mind, and _oh._ They’re a deep green satin that are like the other pair of panties he’d picked out somewhat V cut, but these don’t have a… bottom part. There is, however, a string of black, shiny beads that connect from the front to the back, and uh… He makes himself _not_ say, “Pearls for her pearl?” He can’t, however, make himself not _think_ about it. And how that’s got to feel, nestled up against her, and… He reaches out and touches one of the beads. It’s cool and smooth and… He’s biting his lip, in a good way, now. Images are forming in his head, fast. There’s no bottom on those things, so he could likely just sort of push them a bit to the side, so she could be wearing them while they… do… whatever… anything, and… His index finger slides over the beads again. They’d feel good against him, too.

He can see it in his mind. Rey on her hands and knees, rear to him, those pearls nestled between her maomao lips. He could, just tug the back a little, make them press against her. Make her back arch, and her lips part with a low, soft moan.

He could hook his finger into them, slide them over just a bit, just enough for him to slip his shaft into her. Just enough for his body to rub against them. Enough to feel the smooth roll of them against him, and as he moves, they’ll move against her, too.

Each stroke, deep and steady, moving the beads over her, over him…

One of his hands wanders into his pocket and is holding his shaft down, because otherwise the damn thing is going to leap out, buy this bloody outfit on it’s own, and then march over to Rey and put it on her.

Eventually, his eye wander a little higher up on the counter, and he notices that there’s no top to this. Not that he can see. There is, however, a… again, he knows it’s not a bracelet, because it’s too bloody big for that, and it’s five strands of those beads, one on top of the other. They come together in a clasp, and… Looking more carefully at the size of it, he can see it’s some sort of necklace that lays snug to the neck, from there, thin fine chains, and more of those pearls cascade down, to nestle between her breasts and drape over her belly and waist.

The sales lady is very pleased at his reaction to this. She’s more pleased by him just blindly thrusting his credit stick at her, and there’s a very content layer on top of that that she just got him to buy the most expensive outfit in the store.

 

 

* * *

He biggest problem with doing this during the middle of the day is that he’s got bugger all for focus on anything other than his new goodies _after_ having done it.

At one point, Schiff is really attempting to tell him something important, and it’s just _not_ filtering through the haze of what’s tucked into the top drawer of his desk.

“Sir…”

Kylo’s just staring in the direction of his room.

If he were paying attention, he’d feel Schiff debating what to do about this, looking at him carefully, debating more about _what_ has him so distracted and… somewhat pink cheeked, but… well, he’s not paying attention.

Just to make absolutely sure, Schiff, being something of a brat, does slip, “And then I authorized a payment of seventy-six trillion credits into my own personal account, and as of tomorrow Kinear and I are taking those credits and eloping away to the—oh bugger it all, this would be vastly more fun if you’d start paying attention, but… Shit, what the hell are you thinking about, man?” and then gently, and maybe not respectfully, but well aware of the fact that Kylo could literally break him with his mind, he kicks him in the shin.

That gets a jerk and blink out of Kylo, along with a curious look in Schiff’s direction.

“Are you well, sir?”

“Uh…” That pink on his cheeks goes flushing deeper and redder and…

Schiff just sighs. Then he shakes his head. He knows what he’s looking at now. “Just… go… get her. Or go to her. You’re doing no one any good this distracted. Go scratch the itch, and come back when you can focus on your job.”

Kylo sighs at that. “Is it that obvious?”

“It bloody well is, _now_. Just, go.”

Kylo glares at him. “I’m an adult, not some randy teen who can’t control himself.”

“Tell me one thing I’ve said in the last twenty minutes, and we’ll keep going, otherwise this is just burning my time.”

Kylo desperately tries to attempt to remember what the fuck this meeting is even about.

Schiff gives him a big, smug grin. “I have thirty minutes tomorrow afternoon. An hour if you can come to me or if we comm it.”

“Comm it. Your ship gets nervous when I’m on it.”

“No one enjoys having the Boss breathing down their neck. They don’t enjoy me being on it, and it’s my ship.”

“I’ll… take your word on it.”

Schiff gets up, pulling his datapad to him. Kylo can feel he’s mostly amused by this, because… Oh… Baby-making sex. That’s… apparently… a once a month thing, which Kylo didn’t know, and Schiff’s assuming today’s the day that Rey’s fertile…

Kylo makes a mental note to look that up, because Schiff seems very certain about that one day a cycle and needing to hit it thing, and the man’s got multiple children, so, he likely knows, but… that’s not anything he learned when Luke sat him down, but… He already knows there are huge gaping holes in his information base on that.

He’s just about out the door as he says, “You know, Joshia is a good name.”

Kylo rolls his eyes at that. “Noted.”

 

 

* * *

He certainly didn’t mind when she did it to him…

And he does have… two free hours in his schedule now…

So…

It’s not like there’s a law that they have to wait until work is done… right? And even if there were, he’s the guy who makes the laws, so he can probably break them, too, right?

“C8, no disturbances until I let you know I’m seeing people again.”

“Certainly, sir.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Their room certainly looks _different._ He’s not entirely sure if he likes it, and he’s also not exactly _focused_ on it. But, if, when he is focused on it, it’s not a winner and they want to change it again, it won’t take a massive amount of effort.

He puts the bag with her stuff in it in the back of his wardrobe. He’s thinking they can wait for another day. This is a present for… her… he hopes.

He’s tugging off his clothing, eyeing the bag of goodies for him. The strap is on top and…

He’s feeling… nervous, excited, giddy, and… a slew of other things he’s not exactly familiar with, but is enjoying. Physically, just on the anticipation of doing this, he’s feeling like his shaft just can’t get any bigger without someone touching it, so…

He probably doesn’t _need_ the strap. He’s holding it in his hand, just staring at it. It’s light, soft, except for the snaps. He’s got to keep track of time if he wears it, but… Honestly… They rarely go more than thirty minutes.

He eyes it again, rubbing his thumb over one of the snaps.

It might be fun.

He starts to put it on, figuring that if it feels odd, he can just take it off.

It takes a moment to figure out which snap is the right one. The first one he chooses is very obviously too tight, and the next one he over compensates and has it too loose, but eventually… It’s… snug. Not in a bad way, but… He’s not sure if he likes it. He’s sort of starting to feel like his shaft is falling asleep, that pins and needles sensation, and that’s not great, but… It also does feel… fuller… more sensitive… It… could be good.

He grabs the top pair of panties, the green ones, and slips them on and… “Oh.” He’s so surprised that he says it out loud. The silk moving over his shaft is… He squirms a bit… flushing at the feel of _that._ “Yeah…”

Okay, getting Rey to touch him like this. He’s starting to feel his pulse in his shaft, and generally, when that’s true, he’s a lot further along, so… This is either going to be very fast, or very good, and he’s hoping for the latter.

Those two little bottles of cologne are sitting in his wardrobe. He opens it up, glances at them, and then goes rummaging through Rey’s goodies. Warm desert spices. That’s a Rey scent, and he wants to smell like her.

 _Intensely tied to your sexual response._ Jon wasn’t wrong about that.

Yep. It’s nothing she’s ever smelled like, not around him. But it’s warm and light and blends into his skin and it makes him feel like she’s here, with him. It’s a scent cloud of the feel of Rey all around him. He’s nodding, this is good. It’ll probably be better on her. He tucks it back in the wardrobe. Give it to her later.

Let her rub it off of his skin and onto hers. _That_ lights him up inside.

 _Rey. Can you come here?_ He’s not entirely sure what to do with himself. Lay on the bed, lean against the wall, stand there like a nerf with his shaft leading the way?

 _Are you okay?_ There’s alarm in how she’s thinking at him. He’s never done this before, so there’s no reason for her to automatically assume that if he’s calling for her in the middle of the day, all is well.

 _I_ really _am._ He’s pretty sure that’s the same thing she thought at him when she jumped him as Paige was being born. He drapes himself on his side on the bed, and hopes she likes this.

 

 

He trails his fingers up and down his shaft, so, so lightly, eyes slipping shut, and bites his lower lip, slowly exhaling, focusing down on that sensation and blasting her with it.

When he peels them back open, she’s there, staring at him, eyes wide, mouth open, stock still.

“Good?” he asks with a smile, and a hand outstretched in a _come play with me_ sort of gesture.

 

 

She nods very slowly and licks her lips. Her pupils are blown wide, and he can feel her pulse picking up. “Oh…” Breathes out of her as she absently yanks off her jacket, tossing it aside, “Kylo…”

 

 

“Poe thought… Well, I’d have likely thought about it if I’d thought about things like that, but… Anyway, he suggested I get you a present, because…” This is too much talking. She’s staring at him, eyes tracing all over his body, going back to that stretched green pouch over and over, as she’s pulling off her clothing. “Is this a present?”

Her eyes dart back up to his. She nods very slowly. “You are so… _fucking_ … gorgeous.”

 

 

That floods through Kylo with a warmth all it’s own, ripe and round and flushed with sex and satisfaction and contentment and wanting and joy, and for a second he revels in it, but only a second, because Rey’s on the bed with him, naked, fingertips, hot, _hot_ fingertips hovering over his silk clad tip, and his body twitches at the sensation. A little, “Oh…” breathes out of Kylo at that. Then, “Gentle.”

“Gentle?” Rey drags her eyes away from his shaft under that green silk, and the slowly darkening spot just over his tip, to his eyes.

Kylo licks his lips. “There’s something under there that’s new, too.”

He can feel her thinking about new, and what he could have under there that she can’t see through the silk, and the image of those little dildo-looking things from the video pops into her head. 

He shakes his head. “Not that.” Then he hisses, loud, as she lets her knuckles slip over him. _Gently._

 

__

 

She jerks her fingers back.

“No. It didn’t hurt. It’s just intense.”

“Good intense?”

“I’m still debating on that.”

She closes her hand around him and he moans. “Feels like you’re enjoying it to me.”

His hips rock into her hand, and doing that means the… back… of these panties are also rubbing against him now, and… “It’s… not unpleasant. Might be too much of a good thing.”

She’s staring at his eyes now, now his shaft in her hand, wrapped in green silk. It’s clear from her expression that _tell me more_ is what she wants.

She goes back to just, lightly, barely drifting her fingers over his shaft.

“It’s… called a cockstrap, and… It… goes around the base of the shaft and stones… Supposedly, keeps things bigger and harder and more sensitive. Might make it more difficult to spurt, so… stay on edge longer.”

“But you don’t know.” She bends down and _licks_ the wet spot on the panties, and Kylo’s hips jerk at that, trying to get his shaft into her mouth. She mouths at him, breathing over the head of his shaft, and it’s so hot and moist and then she inhales, cool and intense and… She’s staring at him again, expecting him to get enough brain cells together to somehow answer her, and…

“No. I… didn’t know these were a thing more than three hours ago.”

“But now you do.”

He nods.

She grins at him. “And what were you doing three hours ago?”

“Looking for a present for you.”

She looks back down at his shaft straining the fabric of his panties. “And this is what you came up with?”

“I really hoped you’d like it.”

She grins up at him, pushing him so he’s on his back, shaft doing it’s best to point skyward, held snug in those green panties. “Oh, I do.”

 

 

He wriggles at the sound of her voice, at the way she’s looking at him, at her, naked, above him, adoring him.

She’s on her knees, over him, not touching, but looking. He can _feel_ the trace of her eyes over his skin, over the skin that isn’t naked, and the kilometers of pale, moon-kissed flesh, quivering for her to touch.

“So, am I just supposed to… admire this?”

She’s leaning over him, looking down, watching his body, and right now, Kylo’s certainly not _minding_ the admiring aspect, but… “Hands on appreciating?”

“I could do that, or… How sensitive is it?”

He blasts her with the feel of his shaft in those panties, the tight, full, tingly sensation of so much blood in his shaft right now, and the way every touch is just… more.

She shifts her weight, so she’s straddling him, and rests her hands on his chest, and then slowly, gently, lowers herself so her delta is on him, her pearl right at the head of his shaft, and slides down him.

Both of them groan, _loud_ at that.

His head is back, neck long, eyes shut, just _feeling_ it. _Again, please._ He doesn’t give it voice, doesn’t think he can find his voice right now, not for real words, but _oh fuck!_ she does it again.

 

 

It does feel a lot like being on the edge. Everything is so hard and full right now. Usually, this far along, he’s not this hard, and the skin of his shaft can move over his shaft.

It also doesn’t. He’s got control. That sense of the tingles being a second away isn’t tightening his stones and making his thighs clench.

Rey starts a slow, gentle roll over him, her skin wet, hot against the silk.

“Does it feel good to you?” he asks.

She nods. “Different.”

She pulls back, and he doesn’t pout because she wants to see. See the silk wet with her and him. See it cling to his body. See his shaft, full, high… hard… He knows it’s got to have veins, because… well, all of his body does, but this is the first time they can see them, swollen under the skin, outlined in wet silk.

She scoots back, between his legs, and traces her tongue along the line of one of them.

Kylo collapses back against the bed, moaning, eyes shutting. It feels so good; they won’t stay open.

“Can I take them off?”

“Please.”

She’s careful with it, and slow, gentle. The peel of wet silk over his skin is… Sharp and focused and exquisite. He can feel the pre-spurt leaking out of him as the silk slips back.

“You really like that.”

He shares the feel of it with her, and watches the flush on her chest get deeper, nipples perking further. Nipples… He’s definitely getting her a bra or shirt or something they can do this to her with.

Rey smiles a little, he just blasted her with that idea, and it’s certainly intriguing.

What’s below her hand is more intriguing.

She’s only seen him this hard, this full, the one time she made him spurt with her hand. Every other time he’s spurted with her, he’s been inside her body, so she couldn’t _see_ it.

Rey traces her finger around the cockstrap. The leather and snaps are warm from his skin. “Any closer to deciding if you like this?”

“I think I do. You?”

She grins at him again. Then she straddles him, and with her fingertips points his shaft up. She’s just kissing the tip of his shaft with her maomao. Light, almost sucking, wet slides of her body parting for just the top centimeter.

“Force!” He barely breathes it. No voice, all feeling. “Oh, Rey!”

 

 

“More?” She’s watching him, eyes warm, body hot, _loving_ the look of him completely sprawled out, at the mercy of her body and the pleasure she’s giving him.

 _Yes._ His voice doesn’t hold for it. It’s just a long, begging breath, and a deep, intense, needy feel/thought that aches through her.

Rey sinks a few more centimeters down. “Oh… I can feel the difference. This is _nice._ ”

_Nice?_

She lets him feel the extra stretch, the sensation of fullness. _Nice._ Then she starts to slide all the way down on him, and makes an almost surprised, “Nggh!” sound as her body comes to rest against his.

That jerks Kylo out of the haze of how good this feels. “Okay?” He knows it is, he can feel she’s enjoying something more than expected, but…

She’s rocking against him, a little tentative, and he’s trying to focus on _her_ and not, _her sliding on his shaft_. For a moment, he can feel her searching, and then she gets that _exact_ right spot again.

“Ohhh…” slides out of her mouth, and he knows what happened. The snaps. At least one of them is in exactly the right place, right here, in this position, with her flush to him, for it to press against her pearl.

He shifts his hips a bit, grinding his pelvis against hers.

That gets a sharp inhaled breath from her. “Again.”

He’s grinning up at her, hands finding her hips, as he rocks against her. “Again.”

It is different. They’ve done this before, him grinding against her, his pubic bone giving her something to get some extra friction from, but that’s mostly for her. He certainly loves being in her, but these little circles with his hips are generally just okay. They don’t feel nearly as good as a long, full-shaft glide.

It still doesn’t, but this is different. He’s more aware of her heat, and the way she’s gripping him, and the texture of her insides, beyond just wet and snug. He doesn’t know if that’s part of _nice_ or if it’s him being more sensitive right now, but either way, he likes it.

But up and down is better than this grind, so eventually he remembers his hands, which are just sitting on her hips, and moves one thumb to her pearl. He begins a soft, easy circle, and she starts a long, easy up and down.

His jaw clenches at it. It’s… “Fuck, Rey,” another exhaled breath of a word. Like it’s too intense for him to be loud. Like the pleasure is stealing his voice.

She leans forward, her lips finding his, and the shift in angle changes things again. The feel inside of her, the way her body is brushing against his with each stroke. He’s got to change fingers, because his thumb can’t do what it needs to, not at this angle.

But his fingers can.

Fast, light, slick, and she’s up and down back and forth on him, and his hips are rocking against her. Fingers are fast, hips are steady, not slow, but not the kind of pace his fingers are setting.

She’s clenching over him, again and again, riding the wave and he’s… It’s good. It feels _so good_ but he’s not there, not yet. He probably can’t go all night, shouldn’t try, but he also doesn’t want or need to, but… Long enough to get another spurt for her…

 

 

He slows down, but doesn’t stop moving. Re-centers his pace on long, slow, easy strokes as her body slowly calms down.

She’s kissing his shoulder. _Not done, yet?_

As if she needs to ask. _Apparently. This okay?_

He feels her nod against his shoulder, and then they’re flipped, and he’s on top. “Really, okay.” She meets him long stroke for stroke, and for a few moments it just like that, long, liquid, pleasure sparking up his shaft, centering in his stones, _good._

Her hands are on his ass, pulling at him. _Faster._

He can do _faster._

Faster is fucking incredible. He feels like his shaft’s as long as his lightsaber handle, just as wide, and just as hard.

 

 

This time, he’s feeling close, and his body is acting close, too. His muscles are tighter, movements less coordinated. He can feel Rey spiraling up to her spurt, too.

He’s right… fucking… there… almost… so… close…

He can fucking _see_ his spurt. He can feel it a hair beyond his grasp.

This is… new, and he’s not sure if he likes this. Sometimes Rey struggles to get to her spurt, but usually she’ll just ride along with him on his, and over they both go.

He can feel Rey. Rey on his body, wet and slick and clenching again. Rey in his mind, her body tingling and twitching and loving the feel of his in and on hers.

But he can’t ride it through her, he can’t get _over._

“Please,” he doesn’t even know what he’s asking for, just… something to get _over._ Just… he doesn’t know, wetter, hotter, faster, or maybe slower, or _something._

“Please, Rey, please, I need…” He doesn’t know what he needs. Just that he _needs._ His shaft has never been so big, and so full, and so primed to go off without slipping over.

He can feel Rey doesn’t know, either. For a moment, she’s still in her spurt, still on the glow of her body, but that starts to ease off, especially with him fucking hard, and fast, and begging for her help.

“What do you need?”

“I don’t…” His hair is plastered to his forehead and back, and he doesn’t want to stop moving, doesn’t want to slow down, because this feels… Amazing, but… It’s not doing it for him, and he’s never… Not been able to.

He feels Rey stroking his shoulder, looking at him, concerned, and then thinking, and then…

 

 

Then there’s a hint of her Force, and the universe explodes and his vision whites out he spurts so hard he feels it in his _eyelashes and toenails_. That’s _not quiet._ He’s fairly sure the only reason a horde of storm troopers didn’t just run in is the soundproofing is amazing in here.

He’s panting, tingling, buzzing with his spurt, and the only reason he hasn’t crushed Rey under him is she’s holding him up with her Force.

He’s still pulsing. That… never happens. A good spurt is maybe five or six pulses, and a few aftershocks. This is… He doesn’t know, other than another small aftershock hits, and another, and… it’s still going, slow, easy, more like a twitch than anything else, but still… He should probably roll over, but he’s not sure if he can move, and he can’t bear to think of slipping out of Rey right now.

 

 

She’s still twitching slightly under him, so he doesn’t know if he took her over a third time when he went, or if his time sense was fried as he was getting close to finishing.

Eventually, he gets his arms under him, so he can take his own weight.

Eventually, his breathing slows down and they both stop twitching.

Eventually, he says, “What did you do?”

“Took the strap off. You said it made it harder to spurt, so…”

He nods slowly, and gently nuzzles her cheek and jaw. They share slow, lazy kisses.

Eventually, he does pull out, hissing, and flops onto his back. He’s generally sensitive after he spurts, but not _this_ sensitive. Not _painful_ sensitive. Even with the strap off, he does still look a little flushed and swollen.

Rey grins at him, and rolls onto her stomach, her chin resting on his chest. One of his hands finds her back, and beings to slowly stoke up and down her spine. “So, is this a present I’ll get to enjoy again?”

He laughs, a little. “Not soon. I don’t think I can walk right now, let alone fuck again anytime soon. But… The panties… Whenever you want.”

“The strap?”

“Probably more of a special occasion sort of thing.”

“I know you liked that.”

“I did. It’s just… Intense.”

“I _know._ ” She’s smirking at that. “Once I got it off, I got blasted with how your spurt felt, so… I _know._ ”

“Did you like it?”

“Oh, yeah.” She almost touches his shaft, but he preemptively winces. “And that’s why it’s a special occasion thing?”

He nods. “Can you see the chrono?”

“Yeah. 13:22.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re supposed to take it off before you hit thirty minutes.”

“Thirty-two minutes.”

“Probably why everything is sore right now.”

She shifts, and very, very gently kisses the air a few molecules above his foreskin. He shivers. “We’ll pay more attention to that the time next time.”

He nods at that, too, and pulls her close for a cuddle. His face is pressed to her hair, when he says, “See, I got them during lunch, and that shot my focus to hell and gone. Then Schiff told me to just go and play. And, I can focus now, but I’m just so… content… I don’t think I can move.”

Rey laughs at that. Then she snuggles in closer, and breathes deeply. “Are you wearing cologne?”

“That’s a present for you, too.”

“You wearing scent?”

He shrugs a bit. “I mean, it could be, if you liked that, but I liked how it smelled, because it reminded me of you, so I got a bottle of it for you, but… It makes me think of you, so I put some of it on me before you got here.”

She inhales deeply, and then licks his neck. “This is good.”

He smiles at that, too. “Yay. I like buying things for you.”

That gets a laugh. “You like buying sex stuff for me.”

“I’ll probably like buying non-sex stuff, too. I liked getting the painting with you. Speaking of which,” he absently gestures to the room, without lifting his head or opening his eyes. “Thoughts?”

“You know. I honestly didn’t notice. You were very… distracting… all laid out like that.” She lifts up a bit, so she can see more of it. “This is nice.” She looks around a little more. “It looks smaller now that you’ve got walls.”

“As opposed to…”

“Space. Space with stars, space without stars.”

His brain is just softly flitting about, not really landing on anything, but not quite dreaming yet, either.

Rey nuzzles against him and makes a little _mmm…_ noise. Followed by a somewhat less content, “I’ve got to get moving again.”

“Don’t go.” He’d hold her a little tighter, but that’d take energy, which he’s in short supply of right now.

She kisses him. “Got to, baby.” She’s getting up and he’s pouting at her. She bends down and kisses him again. “This is ridiculously cute, but I really do have to go.”

He sighs. “I know.” He thinks for a moment. “Uh… Got a meeting with my Navi training team at 14:30, so…”

“Get a nap, so you’re fresh enough to focus.”

He stretches a bit. Nap sounds really good. “I should be done by 17:30.”

She smiles at him, and kisses him again. This time he feels the brush of her clothing against his skin. “I’ll be wrapped up by 18:00. You like buying me things, so how about you take me out for dinner?”

He smiles back at her. “Yeah…”

And then he’s asleep. 

 

 

* * *

2/22/2

 

It’s a few days later, when he’s looking over another deal they’ve got possibly bubbling away, the security and meeting space for the Pnia/Lranian peace negotiations/wedding it hits him that _dancing_ is often part of weddings.

It would likely be part of their wedding, too. Especially the one where all the people will be there, and they’ll be trying to look like the Handsome Prince and his Lady.

Except, of course, he’s not exactly, a dancer. At least in the sense that he’s not even remotely comfortable attempting to make himself move to any given piece of music, with Rey, especially if he’s not touching her, in something approaching a graceful or elegant sort of way.

But… That’s not written in stone. He doesn’t _have_ to be bad at it.

Rey likes dancing. She was having a great time at that club. He had to get several of those rum drinks on the inside of him before he started to get over being self-conscious enough to enjoy it.

But… if he were good at it. He’d like it, sober, _if_ he were good at it.

Bounce around with his sweetie and not look like a flaming twit doing it? He’s nodding as the idea fills his head. Yes, that would be good.

And, okay, it’s not taking on a life altering sort of job, but it’s something that involves time and effort to become good at something she likes.

He’d have to _learn_ how to do it, for real. Learn to read the music, and how the footsteps work, and… He learned how to fight and he learned how to fly, so making his body do things to a beat should absolutely be something he can learn.

The image of Rey on the beach with Poe. He was standing there, just outside of the light, _wanting._ He wanted to dance with her. He wanted to push Poe away, because Poe got to be there with her, laughing and touching her and enjoying the evening. He wanted to be the one, with her, in the firelight, making her happy.

He turns that image over and over, shifts it, imagines joining her on the sand, imagines this possible, small, family gathering, the one for them, the one that’ll happen on a beach, somewhere, somewhen, as the sky turns purple and the sun sinks below the water.

He’d have to find someone to teach him how to do it.

There’s that image again. Poe, Rey, on the beach, dancing.

Poe knows how to dance.

 _Poe_ thought this present thing was a good plan in the first place.

Learning to dance, for Rey, for their wedding… _That_ feels like a present. He can’t give it to her at once, but… He’s smiling at that, too. She’d like that.

Poe is… he thinks a moment, getting a feel for him… In his ship messing around with the fuel intake, again.

It’s the middle of the day. He’s _never_ on Lirium this time of day, so no one would expect him.

He’s in _Micah_ before he’s thought twice about it.

 

 

* * *

Poe stares up at Ren, eyes wide, shock numbing his fingers almost to the point of dropping his tool, but the feel of it starting to slip tightens them fast. “What are you doing here?”

Kylo explains, and that does shock Poe deeply enough that he drops the tool.

“You want me to—“

Ren nods. “I know you know how.”

“Well, yeah, but… I’ve never… taught anyone before.”

Kylo glances around _Micah_. He knows Poe’s taken Jacen up in it a few times. And likely Critt, Savarah, Magiit, and Elias, soon. Probably once they hit sixteen. “You teach the children how to fly, how much more complicated can this be?”

“It’s… okay… compared to that, not terribly, but… You really want to learn?”

“No, I’m asking to see if I can set you so far off foot you stammer at me and ask stupid questions all afternoon.”

“Force…” Poe rolls his eyes. “No wonder Rey loves you; you’re a charmer when you want something. You got every entitled asshole gene in your whole family tree, didn’t you?”

Kylo rubs his lips together. “Sorry. I… hate asking for things, and letting people see me be bad at them is worse. Still… will you do it?”

“Why me?”

“I’ve seen you do it, so I know you know how. You’re not part of my command, so I don’t have to risk looking stupid in front of one of them and the gossip mills running wild. Plus, present-for-Rey was your idea, and this seems like a fine one. Lastly, I assume you’ve danced with a man before so my height and shape won’t be awkward or weird for you.”

Poe sniggers at that. “Well… yeah, you’re right about that. What kind of dancing?”

Kylo blinks. He rubs his lips together again. Right… There are _kinds_ of dances. “What’s appropriate for a wedding?”

“Depends on the wedding,” Poe says, settling back, looking like he intends to enjoy the hell out of this. “Our little shindig on the beach is going to be, hopefully, a _lot_ different than your fancy-schmancy affairs of state ball.” Apparently, Poe and Rey have talked wedding ideas, then.

“Hopefully.” _Please,_ Kylo prays. “Dances for both.”

Poe smirks at that. “What do you know how to do already? I mean, you’ve danced with her at least once, right?”

“Hold on and sway to the beat, hold on and bounce around to the beat.”

“Not much going on with your feet, mostly just flailing around with your hips and hands?”

“Pretty much.”

Finn nods. “Okay, at least you aren’t a virgin.”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “It’s been a while since that’s been true.”

Poe smirks at that, too, then he thinks. “Uh… This brilliant plan of yours, how’s it going to work if Rey can’t dance?” She caught on with what he was doing pretty fast, but he also didn’t whip out anything more complicated than a box step.

Kylo smirks. “Only one of us has to learn. She’ll read it off of me if I can do it, or vice versa, but since it won’t be a surprise if I get you to teach her how to dance…”

“Fine. Okay, so…” Poe grabs a rag, wipes the oil off his hands, and gestures to the space in front of them. Kylo looks surprised. “What? I’ve got time. You’ve apparently got time. There’s a floor and a device that plays music. We’re good to go.”

“Okay…” Kylo’s looking a little nervous as Poe grabs his music cube.

“Something basic, a four beat, box step. That’ll get you through most basic dances. Pretty much everything else builds off of this.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t know the song, but it’s not unpleasant. He’s already standing, watching Poe, who steps up to him.

“Until you get the steps down, I’m leading. Once your feet know where they’re going, you can steer.”

That also sounds reasonable to Kylo.

 

 

“My hand here,” Poe puts his hand on Kylo’s waist. “Yours on my shoulder, other hand in mine. I’m going forward, you’re going backward.”

“You don’t have to talk me through it, just do it, I’ll get it.”

Poe flashes him a challenging look, and then starts, and it takes about half a beat, but Kylo’s following. It’s a competent boxstep.

“How are you doing this?”

“I can feel where you’re going to go/what you’re going to do. Same reason you couldn’t shoot me. I know what’s coming and where you’re going.”

“And if I let go?”

“I’ll be okay. If you get too far away, it’ll be difficult. And if you were a droid, I’d be lost. That’s why I’m not trying to learn this from a holo or droid. I read the feel of it off of you, because you’re alive. Just giving me instructions will take until the end of time, and I’ll still be bad at it.”

Poe nods. “Nice trick.”

“It has its advantages. So, we just move in a square?”

“For now.”

“I’ve got this.”

Poe smirks. “Uh huh.” He steps back and messes with the music cube. It’s still box step appropriate, but the music is more complicated and faster. “Okay, _Master_ , show me what you’ve got.”

And suddenly, in a blinding flash of a leather jacket, swagger, stubbly cheeks, the smell of ship’s mechanicals, and fighter pilot’s nerve, Kylo understands why his mother was so horrified at the idea that Poe was a substitute for _him._

He blinks at it, and Poe takes it as nerves.

Kylo shakes his head and then listens to the music, finding the beat. “Am I leading this time?”

“Sure.” They switch hand positions. “You steer with the one on my back, just let me know where to go by the pressure on my back, and remember, I can’t read your mind, so _gently_ move me around.”

Kylo figures he can do that.

He leads this time, moving forward, turning them to the left, and after a few steps, Poe says, “You hold Rey like that?”

“Probably not.” He’s got Poe at the full extent of his reach and is barely touching him.

“Then _practice._ I’m not gonna pinch your ass.”

He pulls Poe a little closer, and holds him a bit more firmly.

Poe just looks at him. There’s a good fifteen centimeters between them. “This is how you dance with your bride?”

“Fine,” he pulls Poe flush to him, and turns him through the box a few more times.

Poe’s looking up at him, and then shakes his head and steps back a bit. “Feels dirty doing this with Leia’s son.”

Kylo bites his upper lip, amused by that on more levels than Poe’s likely aware of. “You’re teaching me to dance, not fuck.”

“Yeah, well, given what you like, I wouldn’t be much use for that.”

Kylo smirks, and shakes his head. There’s so much _Han_ coming off of Poe right now.

“What? There’s a joke in your head, and you’re not telling it.”

“I’m thinking about how if you had been any use for that, you’d likely be my step-dad, and that jerks us out of dirty into outright filthy.”

Poe blinks in shock. “What… no. I… She… Oh…”

Kylo can feel Poe seeing a few memories of him and Leia in a new light.

“Oh.” He’s not wincing, but does look decidedly off foot as a whole series of memories re-slot themselves into new contexts. He blinks a few times, and Kylo can feel him thinking to himself, _She knew I didn’t go for women… That’s likely why nothing ever got said, but… Oh…_ The memory of Leia telling him to get his head out of his ass and stop falling for guys who weren’t for him is all but vibrating in neon colors right now. Gods, she was telling herself as well as him… _Fuck._

Kylo nods, smirking at Poe. “Uh huh. So, there’s more to it than this, what’s next?”

Poe jerks slightly, back in the here and now, and decides that here and now is a much better place to be. “Ballroom, or on the beach?”

Kylo probably needs more practice for the ballroom, but he’d rather be good at dancing with Rey on the beach. “Beach.”

Poe smiles at him. “Right answer.”

 


	28. Stjerne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Loves, We've got a few short ones, so there's going to be a bonus Wednesday update. ;)

_Well now…_ Orlac blinks a bit, as he reads a note from one of his former students, who now lives on New Alderaan.

 

 

It’s not exactly all over the news. At least not outside of the New Alderaan newies, but, apparently, the presumptive bride/wife/friend… consort seems to be the term that pops up most often, of Kylo Ren, formerly Ben Organa-Solo, will, in the next month, be visiting the home he’s never claimed, and once there, will do… Force alone knows what. Though the chattering class is somewhere between apprehensive and welcoming of the idea that he may attempt to make a play for it.

Officially, the idea is that The Order and New Alderaan will come to a formal non-aggression pact of some sort, but some sort covers a lot of territory. And no one knows what, if anything, the presumptive heir of Alderaan is going to attempt once he’s got said pact.

The current leaders of Alderaan are blandly talking about how, as a bastion of peace, they’ll work with anyone who also incorporates pacifistic leanings, and seek to build bridges to any sentients in the galaxy.

The local papers are of split minds. Some are opining about how the child of Leia Organa (Never Solo. She’s never, ever called Leia Organa Solo in the newsies.) might bring some new life into the stultifying morass of Alderaanian politics. Some are talking about how there’s no _proof_ that Kylo Ren even is the child of Leia Organa. (He suspects those voices are being paid by the leaders of Alderaan.) Some are begging the government to arm, and arm intensely, the man who controls tens of thousands of City Killers will be up to no good, coming to them, child of Organa or not.

Orlac reads, and notes, and flips to the real estate section. It’s bigger than usual. He makes a note of the fact that real estate prices in Alderaan are dropping right now, which means people are nervous enough to _sell_ , but not nervous enough to drop everything and flee.

Probably a rational place to be if Kylo Ren’s about to swoop down on your planet.

Orlac’s got another note from his Mum, which he’s sighing at. The Corporation doesn’t want to extend any sort of formal address to the Order. But, if Ben… Kylo’s doing what it looks like he might be, they’ll end up in direct competition with each other, at least when it comes to The Calrissian Corp’s _unofficial_ businesses. From the note, it’s clear that she wouldn’t mind if his behind the scenes sort of feelers wandered into that direction and reported back.

He rolls his eyes at that. Years of complaining about what he’s been up to, but all of a sudden, _now_ it’s useful.

His Mum is easier to brush off than his ‘student’ in New Alderaan. Officially, he’s politically neutral. And she knows it. Unofficially, he’s a collector of intelligence, and… he is woefully lacking in information about what’s going on inside The Order.

And that’s getting to be a glaring blind spot.

He re-reads the official information coming out about New Alderaan. The Order is making it loud and clear that it’ll show up with offers of peace and goodwill. Though, if memory serves, and it doesn’t have to because he’s got vast store if intel hidden somewhere on this planet, and off of it, that was also what the Empire claimed when it began moving toward a new territory.

“Go along with us and everything’ll come up roses,” he mutters under his breath.

Orlac isn’t sure if boasting to the galaxy about how peaceful you are, when most of your holdings are a pile of flying weapons, is an ideal strategy, but… It’s probably not a terrible one, so why not?

What’s the worst that could happen? People get itchy and try to shoot Solo… Ren… Ben… whoever he is… out of the sky? And would that be any less likely with him not offering peace treaties right and left?

That said, Ren appears to be making waves, and Orlac’s hit the point where he likely _should_ know more about what’s going on in The Order.

Which means going to visit Stjerne.

There are likely other ways Orlac could learn more about the recent changes in The Order. It’s not like he isn’t sitting on a repository that records and archives every major news feed in the galaxy. And it’s not like he doesn’t have a collection of ‘avid journalers’ who just happened to graduate from his program, spread across the galaxy, collecting interesting bits and pieces day in and day out. And then, discretely, send him the intel back.

One of the great things about digital copies of art, you can hide so much information in the color coding, including a lot of sensitive information that most people wouldn’t want getting out.

The problem is, he wants something beyond the puff pieces the Order keeps putting out. And he wants what the Order doesn’t know, as well. And his journalers, as good as they are at what they do, haven’t yet felt any desire to actually join the Order, so right now, he doesn’t have an ear actually inside of it.

Near it, yes. He’s got ears near pretty much everything.

Which means, sooner or later, most news comes through his school.

Alas, his explicit neutrality stance means he can’t just linger around on the quad or pay extra attention at the supper tables and just listen in. He knows his students don’t practice perfect neutrality, but they’re also smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves and select friends.

He also knows that several of his students are from First Order friendly families, but that finding each other can be… difficult. They can’t breach the topic openly, but…

But they know who they can talk to. Even if they’re only barely paying attention, they know.

Stjerne Hux has been at Orlac’s school for the last seven years.

The late, unlamented General’s ‘half-sister.’

At least, that’s what the lady who brought her, an extremely tall blonde with the same piercing blue eyes as the girl, said. And, it’s true that Orlac’s got no reason to think that’s untrue. After all, if she were the General’s half-sister, she would come by her hair, cheek bones, and pale skin naturally. She would have gotten those things from the same place the General did.

It’s also true that he didn’t believe it for a second. He’s got too much of his father’s skills to watch someone lie to his face and not twig to it.

(That said, he did check. Just because your gut says something doesn’t mean it’s right. Always check, that was another of his father’s lessons. If Stjerne is the age the woman who never claimed to be her mother said she was, Brendol Hux died just about the time she would have been conceived. Judging by the rumors of how he died, Orlac wouldn’t put it past the Blonde that he died _right_ after she was conceived. That said, having seen the Blonde… Well, he knows drugs are a thing, but… The man stupid enough to rape that woman, and then leave her alive after, is the man who’s too stupid to breathe. And if that man were Brendol Hux, well, he did stop breathing very shortly thereafter.)

But, even at eighteen-years-old, less than a month after he opened the school, he also had too much of his father’s discretion to call a liar a liar to her face, especially when she was obviously talking about her daughter… And said daughter is sitting in the room with them... And she was transferring a sizable sum of credits, enough to cover tuition and then some, for said child, for the rest of her natural life, should she desire to stay here.

Plus, it didn’t hurt that the lady in question, whose name he never got, was big enough, strong enough, and armed enough to break him like a twig snapping under her extremely well-polished boots.

Thus, at eight-years-old, Stjerne Hux was the first child to start lessons at Orlac’s school.

There are close to four hundred students here now. Most of them are adults, young adults sometimes, but not, like Stjerne was, literal children. Most of them, like Rey, come for a while, a season or two, take a few lessons, make friends, work on a project, do some research, and then drift along.

The ones who he senses are of kindred spirits in regards to the collecting and safeguarding of information, go onto become his journalers. They go, they observe, they write, they beg, borrow, buy, and steal books, they send him pretty pictures back. He uncodes them. And his library grows.

Stjerne’s never left. And since that day, she’s also never had a visitor. At least, not of the sort who might be kin. The blonde never came back, and though, officially, Orlac would never dream of violating his students’ privacy by looking into their communications, unofficially, he does keep a quiet eye on what goes in and out, and if something looks troubling, he lays eyes on it.

He may not be the child his parents wanted, but neither of them suffered, or raised, a fool. And he was not about to have the daughter of the face of the First Order in his midst and not keep a very close, and extremely discreet, eye on her. 

Stjerne used to get letters, from a woman he assumes was the blonde. Until the letters stopped coming. She would, also, rarely, get a very stiff, extremely stilted note from her ‘half-brother’ (and given the contents of said notes, he’s fairly sure General Hux was under the impression that said child was his half-sister, too. Or perhaps they were so stiff because he was uncomfortable keeping up the façade. What that says about the Blonde, or the Hux men, or Brendol’s sudden demise, he’s not willing to contemplate too closely.) until they stopped coming, too.

Hux vanished from view a few months after the letters from the Blonde stopped. He’s not officially dead. Granted, given how the First Order works… or worked… him suddenly vanishing, a new General being moved into his place, in addition to the letters stopping, are fairly good indications that he’s dead. Or at least so damaged he’s in no condition to do anything even remotely useful any longer.   

So, as best he knows, Stjerne doesn’t have any _direct_ connections to what used to be the First Order and is now the Order. But he also knows that one out of every twenty of his new students, more so now, seem to take quite an interest in the fifteen-year-old ginger girl, who has a beyond healthy interest in stone and metal work.

He doesn’t know what, exactly, they have to say to her. He’s not watching, that closely, just enough to know that they generally don’t spend too long with her. His guess is they find out that she doesn’t know where her father/half-brother is, and isn’t involved in the Order, and thus return to their studies. And often, within a week or two, wander off, never to return again.

That said, if he does want to get a sense of how the wider galaxy, especially the less-than-complimentary to Ren parts, are thinking, a visit may be in order. After all, if you’re seeking out Stjerne Hux, you’re likely not a huge fan of Ren.

He smirks a bit. Stjerne can keep a secret, she can. She’s practically a black hole when it comes to information, but maybe she’ll share a little with the one person who’s been a constant in her life for the last seven years.

Maybe.

 

* * *

One of the things Orlac’s father always said to him was: “If you’ve ever got a bad feeling about something, trust it.”

“And do what?”

Lando had half-smiled and nodded. “That’s the question, now, isn’t it? Sometimes you’ve got to run. Sometime you’ve got to fight. Sometimes you’ve got to smile and look like nothing is wrong.”

“How will I know which to do?”

“Luck and experience. And let’s hope, until you’ve got experience, that you’re lucky.”

The first time he met Stjerne, he decided smiling and looking like nothing is wrong was the best course of action. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ might as well be that child’s name.

She’s fairly quiet. And tends to look at people too long and too hard. She doesn’t blink often enough. And that’s unsettling, but not the sort of thing that makes adults want to run away from her.

Her artwork on the other hand… Well, when he said to Rey that sometimes the galaxy is better off with people painting pictures of bloody battles rather than fighting them, he was thinking about Stjerne.

She doesn’t paint. Not anymore. She used to. She was good at it, too. Maybe not the most impressive use of color or depth, but her realism was off the charts. Now she sculpts. Stone and metal. She’s happiest with a chisel or rasp in hand, sometimes a massive hammer, sometimes fine detailed scrapers.

She’s big for a woman, especially big for an adolescent one. But, her mother was big, too. She’s taller than Orlac, and given her love of stonework and metal work she’s bigger through the shoulders and arms than he is, too. Or she would be if she didn't slouch all the time.

Like many adolescents, she’s not the tidiest in her personal habits or grooming, so many people coming to see her are greeted by a very large girl, with long, dirty red hair tied back in a lank ponytail, the sound of rasping or loud banging often follows her around, and she’s usually covered in sweat and stone dust.

Most people who are also actually artists are unbothered by this. Anyone who’s actually been on a creative binge knows that sometimes food, showers, clean clothing… all of that fades in comparison to the thrill of creation.

That said, looking at what she’s creating…

There’s a sculpture, it’s famous. Orlac saw it in person, and took her to see it, too. The original is of a girl trying to carry the weight of the galaxy on her back, and it’s crushing her. She’s slowly sinking below the weight.

Apparently Stjerne thought that was an interesting theme, and is continuing along with it. In her variation on the theme, the girl is being crushed under the weight of a star destroyer, it’s an extremely detailed model of one, thoroughly dwarfing the girl, and the weight of it is not just pushing her down, but her bones are starting to shatter, cutting through her legs and back.

It’s depressing, horrifying, and technically astonishing.

Apparently, though, she’s modified her plan. There are still tiny models of the girl and the star destroyer in her workshop. There's a full-sized version of the girl, bent under the weight no one could ever carry. The destroyer isn't there. 

“It’s looking good,” Orlac says as he steps into her workshop. Stjerne's got the side walls completely open right now, so 'in' is a more nebulous concept than normal. He can just about glimpse the girl under a huge block of stone. He wanders to her desk, and sees new sketches. Not a destroyer, not any longer. Now they’re sketches of a girl being crushed under the weight of StarKiller.

He heads to the sculpture and checks the girl under the rock. He can get a feel for how this'll look, the girl crushed under the weight of a weapon that destroyed an entire system.

 

 

Apparently, he’s not the only one who’s been thinking of the First Order lately.

She grunts in his direction, for once, she’s actually fairly clean and well-kept. But, she’s also, from the looks of it, setting things up today. “Not sure about the balance.”

He waves that off. “You know just as well as I do that right now, you just need the fields to keep the piece up. Can’t balance it until it’s done.” He gently touches the block of stone, gives it a tiny push. It’s solid and steady atop the girl. “That said, it looks and feels right to me.”

She does cock her head at that. He’s not wrong, but it feels… off… to just use the field generators to hold the stone in place.

“You think everything I do looks right.”

“Probably because I’ve got the eyes of a hawk, and I _know_ when something looks right.”

She just looks away from him, staring at the massive block of granite in front of her. “And I’ve got the eyes of a killer. What’s got you here?”

“What’s got you saying that?” Orlac blinks at that. Stjerne’s always been intense, but that’s… off… for her. That ‘bad feeling’ is intensifying.

“I’ve been dreaming… weird dreams, lately. My older brother… Except he’s not my older brother, is he?”

“The lady who brought you here said he was your half-brother.”

“My mom. Yeah, I know.” Her eyes narrow. “Too many dreams. I don’t usually dream this much.”

 

 

That ‘bad feeling about this’ in Orlac’s gut is intensifying. “You paying attention to the news?”

“Some. Why?” She crouches down, looking at the girl dwarfed by the stone.

“A lot of people want to know anything they can about Ren.”

That gets a look away from the sculpture. “He killed my brother… father… Armitage. I dream about that, too.” She shrugs, puts her field monitor down. “I don’t know if the dreams started in my own head or not. Some of the people who visit me tell me that, too.”

“Ah… What else do they tell you?”

“They want to know if I know anyone who might come up with a decent strike against him. They look at me, try to see if I can be _Hux._ If I can be the tech wizard he was, come up with a new StarKiller. Apparently, Ren destroyed every known copy of the plans, and had the surviving engineers, and a few others who could have possibly made a better weapon, killed.”

“He never was stupid.”

Stjerne doesn’t miss that comment. “You know him?”

“I might have known the man he used to be. At least, I met him once.”

She nods. “That’s one more time than I met my father.”

“Whichever Hux he may be.”

That gets a shrug, too. “Why is your mom asking you about Ren? Doesn’t she know a million people who might know him?”

Orlac half-smiles. That covers the cold down his spine. He didn’t mention his mother wanting to know. Stjerne’s always been unsettling, but this is a much deeper level of unsettling than normal for her. “She does. My guess is she doesn’t want to be seen asking.”

“So she asks you, and you ask me, and all I know is that a bunch of people who don’t like him are so desperate as to come here, to look at me, and hope I can build them a super weapon, because they’re afraid to go up against him in anything smaller than a planet killer, or at shorter range than half a galaxy between them.”

“That’s a lot of fear.”

Stjerne nods. “I feel it coming off of them in clouds of stagnant red and whorls of black. They say he reads minds. That he knows when an attack is coming. That he can kill a man with a twitch of his fingers. They’d leave the Order because he was tearing through others working on coups. Killed them before they could get them properly in place. They figure even he can’t feel an attack if it comes from the far side of the galaxy.”

“And what do they intend to do once the galaxy is rid of Ren?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think they know. Laugh?”

“Probably the only thing they’ll be set to do.” He nods to the sculpture again. “You know, if you don’t think the balance is working with the fields, we can do it the old fashioned way. Those crossbeams are rated for up to twenty-five tons, and…”

She nods to the far side of the room, and he glances over, seeing the pulleys and hooks already there.

He nods at that, too, and gives her shoulder a little squeeze. “Good girl.”

 

* * *

A girl crushed by the weight of a weapon… Not subtle, but that’s also Stjerne, not subtle at all, ever. Granted, once it’s visibly clear what she’s making… Maybe some of the questioners will decide not to ask.

 

* * *

Back in his home, Orlac sighs. Anyone with enemies who are that scared is going to make the galaxy change. Going to make people stand up and notice. Which means he _needs_ an in on the Order. He’s got to get someone in there.

It doesn’t take more than a minute to find out how to get someone in. Easy as breathing. Apparently, you’ve just got to show up. That said, he doesn’t think any of his journalers are even remotely interested in enlisting in the Order.

From everything he can see, basic Order training is not, on any level, fun.

He’s almost given up, logged out, gone back to reading his collection of letters when he notices that the Order is also interested in offering space to buyers, sellers, and anyone else who wishes to market themselves.

Their ‘neutral space initiative.’

He’s scowling at their information page. That really should be easier to find, not buried away behind three links on a subpage. Anyone who wants to use Corporation space can find all the details on the top of the landing page on their info site.

But… as he finds the information and reads it… Apparently, the Order will offer space to anyone who’ll pay for it. Security if they need it. At the low end of the scale, there’s space for shops and taverns and… even food carts. High end, they’ve got places for embassies, galleries, corporate headquarters…

He keeps reading, and shakes his head slowly.

No wonder his Mum is asking. They’re not just going up against the Corporation’s _unofficial_ business. If they get good at this, they’ll be going up directly against them in their secondary business, too. (Technically, primarily, the Calrissian Corp is a _mining_ operation. In that, officially, 54% of their on the books holdings are mining operations, that’s still, technically, true.)

There was nothing in the galaxy his Dad and Uncle Han loved more than a free-port. A place where anyone could come, fuel up, their ships and bellies, work a deal, find a job, trade secrets, play a few hands, and move on.

That’s part of why, once the money began rolling in fast enough, Lando started building them all over the place. They were… more than anything… his _home._ Yes, eventually, he became _respectable_ , but the scoundrel living from one hand of cards to the next was always just a centimeter under the surface, and…

Lando never said it. Maybe never thought it, too hard, but if the charmed life somehow uncharmed, and if the magic went away, and if the Admiral was ever on the run again, having a huge collection of free ports friendly to him would be the difference between barely scraping by, and surviving in the style he adored.

And Solo, who calls himself Ren, but really shouldn’t, is apparently attempting to build the biggest, fanciest, _moving,_ free-port in the galaxy.

Orlac opens up his personal data pad, and starts a note to his Mum, detailing what he’s going to need if he’s going to open up an art school on the _Supremacy_ , and take advantage of their ‘neutral space initiative.’

After all, if the man is going to make it _that_ easy to spy on his ass, there’s absolutely no reason for him to make it more difficult than it needs to be.

One more thought occurs to him once he’s sent the note to his Mum. If Ren’s good at this, and if people come, not only will he be ideally located to spy on Ren, he’ll be ideally located to spy on everyone else, too.

He thinks of his father, and Uncle Han, who loved free ports. Well, maybe there’s a world where Orlac Calrissian, who not only can’t fly his own ship, but doesn’t actually like them much, either, will love free ports, too. After all, they represent… opportunity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stjerne Hux? Really Keryl? In my defense, I did introduce her, in a throw away line, back in Tension/Balance. ;) Yes, I am the sort of writer who will give a character a side mention, ignore them for 600,000 words, and then bring them back as a possible new Force user. 
> 
> (Big evil grin.)
> 
> Happy Saturday, loves!


	29. Courtship

“Yeah, I know, I should have gotten you back sooner.”

R2 beeps at Poe.

“Look, Ren or Rey could have taken you back at any time. You want a ship; you’ve got to wait until I’m at least in the neighborhood of the _Supremacy._ I’m not your taxi service.”

Annoyed beeping.

“It’s really not that bad. Kind of bizarre the first time, but after that you get used to it.”

Incredulous beeping.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. BB-8 says that to me all the time.”

And BB-8, as if conjured by that conversation, rolls over, and adds his own input to it.

Poe sighs, and filters out the two droids chattering away behind him.

 

 

* * *

He’s got his landing clearance. Still an hour to go. Probably another three or four to get everything loaded. He supposes the _Supremacy_ could be a lot more efficient than he expects, but… They’re not going to be.

So, he’s here, on the _Supremacy_ for at least four hours, and…

Jon never responded to his note. Well, running away like that was kind of a shaft move, but…

But he also asked Ren if he actually likes men, so… That means there’s still hope. Worst he can do is say no.

Poe taps Jon’s number into his comm, and then waits, and…

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jon.”

Dead silence for a moment, followed by a sharp inhale, and “Poe!”

Poe feels a flush of pleasure. That sounds like a happy Jon. “Hey. I’m gonna be shipside in an hour or so, and then sitting around waiting for my cargo. You want to get lunch with me?”

More silence, followed by a quick, “Shit.” Then, “Uh… Sorry, that wasn’t aimed at you. I’ve got lunch plans, and I sort of have to attend them. I’m the guy who called the meeting and got them all together.”

Poe nods. He’s pretty sure Jon’s not lying to him. He sounds genuinely disappointed. “Yeah, I know all about that. Next time…”

“Can you be at the F-Deck before 13:00? That’s when I’d have to leave the F-Deck to get to my meeting. I could… I don’t know, have a cup of tea while you have lunch?”

Poe grins, checks the chrono. “If everything goes right, I can be up there by 12:00. I don’t know which elevator I’ll be heading up, but if you can get closer to me, we’d have a bit more time.”

“Most of what I’ve got before 13:00 is on datapads, I can read on the tram. So… Let me know where you land, and I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

“Are you getting to be a regular here?” Jon asks as he sits across from Poe. After meeting him at the elevator, they split up. Poe found himself lunch. Jon got them drinks, and now they’re sitting at a table in the middle of one of the food courts. Jon pushes a cup toward him. “Tarbine tea. I hope it’s something you like.”

“I’m flexible. It’s a bit bitter for my tastes, but every now and again, it’s fine.”

Jon nods, and then passes over two small sachets of sweet cream. “Better?”

Poe grins. “Actually, yes.” As Jon’s doctoring up his own tea, Poe says, “Not sure about regular, but… I wouldn’t mind visiting more often. I’m here today because someone needed to get R2 back, and… Kylo’s found a snow moving machine for us, so I’ll shuttle it home, and we’ll stop bitching about sore backs and shoulders.”

“Don’t you have twenty-five kids who can shovel snow? Not that, growing up on Coruscant, you get a lot of weather, or weather-related chores, but I do know Mum made us clean the windows and doors and make sure the front of the shop was sparkling at all times.”

Poe smirks at that. “You know, kids can really be whiny little boogers sometimes. Any given one of them is fine for shoveling like… three meters, and then they go wandering off, or get cold, or it’s too windy, or…”

Jon smiles, or smirks, a bit at that. He certainly remembers doing his best to skive off of cleaning chores. “How long is it? The settlement isn’t that big.”

“About half a klick, and no it’s not that big, but… It’s not the sort of thing where we can just tell them to do it, and then come back an hour later and find it done. Part of how Rey runs the place is, if you’re not willing to do it yourself, you don’t get to make someone else do it. Everyone’s got to take a turn.”

Jon snerks at that. “Uh huh… _Commander_ Dameron.”

Poe smirks a little, and sips his tea. “ _Grand Marshall._ Yeah, she’s a little vague on why being an officer is fun.”

Jon seems to enjoy that. “Weren’t you guys in the New Republic too… egalitarian for that sort of thing?” He’s mostly just tweaking Poe’s nose on that. He knows that officers are officers everywhere that has officers.

“If we were supposed to be, I didn’t get that memo.”

Jon laughs.

“Want to tell me what your lunch meeting is about?”

Jon sighs. “Holy Ilona…” He pauses. “You know that god, right?”

“Luck in dark times, yeah, every flier knows Ilona.”

He nods to the Maji pendent on Poe’s chest. “But you’re… Church of the Force? Maji? How’s that work?”

“Maji, because it feels right. I was raised Church of the Force, but our family was relaxed about it. These days I’m… agnostic on the idea of any great Force, power, God, Goddess, whatever.”

That confuses Jon. “But you’ve seen Rey and Kylo, and…”

“Look, I know there’s _something_ that lets them do all of that stuff. And… Rey’s balance stuff feels… productive and valuable, like where I’m supposed to be, so I’m happy to flow along with that.” He taps his spiral token. “The Resistance was dying, and I needed a home and purpose, and it gives me that, but… I don’t know how it works. There’s a finite number of things I’ve got a firm grasp of, and that’s not one of them. But, yeah, I know Ilona, even in the New Republic or Resistance fliers would often wear her medal. And no one, not even hardcore Church of the Force guys or Concordance of the Stars followers would turn down her holy men when they’d come by to bless our ships. When the only thing between you and the void is a few centimeters of plasteel, transteel, and your own skill, and maybe the smile of a god, you’ll take any help you can get.”

Jon nods at that. “Okay, so… Lunch meeting…”

“That you’re hoping for luck with?”

“That I’m going to need some luck to get it to go the way I need it to. Technically, I don’t run Tactical Design any longer. But me, and all of my stuff is there. We’re in the process of getting a new space set up for me and mine, but, that space won’t be ready for five and a half months. Meanwhile, we’re getting new people in hand over fist, so as Em has said to me, none too gently, that while she’s glad I’m doing important work, and she’s happy to have me nearby, I’m also taking up space she needs, to make sure all of those new people have things like basic gear. So, lunch meeting to get everything in place to get my ass out of TD the second there’s a space ready for me in Diplomacy, which means seeing if I can get Threepio and his division to speed up at least enough of the construction to get my personal office ready in three months instead of five and a half.”

Poe nods. “So, massive fucking pain in the ass that’s got to happen, but no one wants to do?”

_“Exactly.”_

“With a side of, and if everything goes perfectly, and it won’t, because it _never_ goes perfectly, you could maybe get it done in one time frame, but now you need it faster. That’s where Ilona’s coming in, right?”

Jon sips his tea. “Yeah.”

Poe smiles gently, enjoying the way Jon’s looking at him as he says that. The comfort of someone who gets it. “I’ve sat through a lot of those meetings in the past.”

“And more in the future?”

“Who knows? If Kylo and Rey ever remember that idea that maybe I’d be of some use for setting up ways to get the Order into places it shouldn’t be… What’s up after that?”

Jon shakes his head. “ _Long story._ ”

“One day, I’ll happily listen.” He sips his tea. “I take it it’s a longer than a cuppa story, though.”

“By a light year.” Jon watches the way Poe’s looking at him. He sighs. “So… You’ll be around to listen to that story?”

“Yeah. I like listening to your stories.”

Jon sighs at that, too.

Poe cocks his head, curious. “You don’t look overjoyed at that.”

 

 

“I…” His eyes narrow. Poe’s looking at him with a warm seriousness, like whatever he says _matters._ “Confused. I’m fucking confused by it.” He’s cupping his tea between his palms, and leans in closer to Poe, looking at him, studying his face, trying to figure him out by sight alone. Whatever he’s looking for, the answers aren’t in Poe’s face, so he keeps talking. “You act like you’re interested in me, but I’m awfully sure you just about sprinted out of my room when I tried to do something about it, so… Uh… First things first, I guess. Kylo’s got the story right; you’re narrow for men?”

Poe laughs. “Extremely. Uh… I know a lot of guys who are narrow for men at least start out with girls, and figure out through hands on experience that they’re not for them. I just… I knew. They’re not bad or gross or anything, they’re just, not what does it for me.

“And, I am interested in you. And… sprinting out of your room physically hurt, and I’ve been kicking myself in the ass for it ever since, but…” Poe’s turn to sigh. He doesn’t want to say the truth, not the full truth, not _every time I look at that marriage band hiding under your glove, I get scared you’re going to fuck me and run away._ So, he settles for his half of the truth. “You ever feel like you’ve made the same mistake a million times over, and finally you’re thinking maybe it’d be nice _not_ to make that same mistake?”

Jon straightens up a little, defensive. “You think I’m a mistake?”

“No.” Poe smiles wide and easy, and tries to put as much attraction and desire as he can into his look. “I think my usual pattern is a mistake, and I’m trying to not make it with you.”

Jon relaxes a bit at that, and thinks about it. “So, you looking to make new and interesting mistakes with me?”

“Yeah,” Poe smiles wide and deep at that. “And… Look, I like you. Really like you. This is probably going to be the bloody highlight of my week. And… I want to be… Good for you, okay? I’ve… fucked the pooch over sideways enough times to know that easy isn’t always going to be right. And… uh… shit… Force! You’re easy on the eyes and a lot of other things, too, I imagine.”

Jon’s eyes spark. “Do you, imagine?”

Poe’s gazing at him, eyes soft, and hot. “Fuck, yes! Every night.”

“Good.” Jon’s foot slides forward and gently strokes up the back of Poe’s calf. “I’m not getting why it’s got to stay in the realm of imagining.”

 

 

“Because one thing I’m excellent at is falling for guys who aren’t for me, not really. For seeing the man I want to be there, and not the one who is. And, well, I’ve already done every possible variation on the theme of, ‘Oh shit, he’s narrow for girls,’ and now I’m interested in you, and… I want to make sure you are who I think you are. So, even though I’m really enjoying what you’re doing with your foot, and I’d really like to do a whole lot more along those lines, and see if you like having them done to you, and… Shit… Look, I haven’t found any sort of sex I’m not enjoying thinking about with you, but… I’ve been disappointed enough over the years, so I’m thinking, maybe we actually get to know each other first, and maybe, after a while, as we get to see who’s really there, if we still like each other…” Poe grins, fighter pilot nerve and bold as brass charm all over his face. “Well… I may be narrow when it comes to boys or girls, but I’m… how’d you put it? ‘Wide as the galaxy?’ When it comes to what I like to do with men once I’ve got one, and,” He eyes Jon up and down, and commits to it, lets the pet name that he only uses with BB-8 out, “Pretty Boy, I’ll take you places you’ve only imagined.”

A slow, half grin spreads over Jon’s face. “That’s intriguing. I’ve got a vivid imagination.”

“I really hope so.”

“Pretty Boy?”

“You like it. You just about glowed at me when I told you how gorgeous you are back in your rooms. And I like making you glow.”

“So we…” Jon’s still looking a little confused by this. “Just… be friends?”

“Friends with intent. I’m… courting you. It’s an old-fashioned concept that I’ll admit I’ve never actually tried before, but… Like you said, I’m looking to make new and interesting mistakes with you. So, I’ll hang around, and be sweet, and get to know you, and hopefully you’ll get to know me, and then we’ll… make sure we like what we find.”

“But not have sex.”

“But not have sex.” Poe nods.

Jon’s still looking confused, and it’s abundantly clear he does not, on any level, understand why they don’t do _both._

“Look, I like sex, a lot, and I’m looking forward to having it, a lot, with you, but I’d also like to actually finish up and feel good about it after. And it’s been a really long time since that’s been true. Since it was good in my stones and my heart. And, maybe, you know, if we go slow, and we talk with each other and learn each other’s stories, get to really know each other, first, maybe… Maybe, when you and I are cooling down, we’ll also get to trade lazy kisses, and have a good cuddle, tell stupid jokes, make each other laugh, and maybe, actually, _sleep_ together.”

And Poe knows he just hit Jon where he lives. Got him in the guts and stones. It’s clear on his face, and the way his body doesn’t exactly curl in, but his posture shifts, becoming both defensive and wary. Then he slowly nods. “Okay, yeah. I know.”

“Good. So… You gonna tell me to bugger off? Because you don’t look happy about this.”

“I hate waiting.” And both of the know that’s not _at all_ where the problem is.

Poe takes it straight on, and flashes him a wide, easy grin. “I’m worth it.”

“No sex… at all?”

“You can tease me all you like, and all I like, but if you wouldn’t touch Kylo that way, don’t do it to me.”

“So… we just… flirt?”

“And get to know each other.”

Jon sips his tea, and thinks. Poe watches him. He can remember being about where Jon is, and how… in some ways sex was a defense. It was easier and significantly less terrifying than actually getting to know someone and really caring about them.

Jon blinks again. “Can I have sex with other people?”

“Whenever you like. I… I know monogamy is a thing, but… We’re getting to know each other, and… You like sex, a lot, with other people. I’m not going to begrudge you that. I want to know _you,_ but I’m more than observant enough to have already noticed that you are not interested in going celibate, so… If we actually, really, like each other, as humans, when we know each other better, as opposed to just want to fuck each other, we can talk about monogamy or whatever, but for now… I don’t see any reason why you’d have to stop fucking other people.”

He really hopes Jon doesn’t ask if he’s going to keep fucking other people.

Fortunately, he doesn’t. Jon thinks about that, sipping his drink slowly, before saying, “You’re not even… remotely fussed at the idea of me fucking other people.”

“Why would I be?” Poe smirks at him. “You got a shelf life or something I'm not aware of? Do it too many times and you run out? Oops! Hit my lifetime allotment of fucking, sorry Poe, none for you!" He laughs at that. "I’m envious, but… if we get on as well as I think we will, eventually we'll be fucking each other. But… for now, friends with intent.” Poe taps his chrono. “And you’ve got to get back to it, don’t you?”

Jon curses quietly. He’s going to have fuck all for focus and attention the rest of this afternoon. He stands up, and drains his tea. “You’re right.”

Poe’s holding his breath, hoping he didn’t just scare Jon off, but he can see the way Jon’s watching him, and feels the moment he decides to go for it.

“Can you… get back here soon?” Jon asks.

“Technically, I can be here as often as I want. Likewise, you’ve got a standing invite at Lirium. I’m not always there, so comm first, but whenever I am…”

Jon nods. “Eventually, I’ll take you up on that.” He can see Jon mentally going through his calendar. "I've got a free lunch three days from now? Same time, same place?"

Poe beams at him. "I'd love that."

 

* * *

At the end of the meeting Jon’s got a few free minutes, and a minor epiphany.

He decides to walk Threepio out.

Once they’re in the hall, past the rest of the members of the meeting he says, quietly, “Did… Do you actually know Poe?”

“Commander Dameron? Certainly, Jon. He began working with us on security twenty-one years ago.”

“Was he a baby?”

Threepio appears to be amused by that. “He was the youngest commissioned flier in the history of the Navy of the New Republic.”

They walk for another moment as Jon contemplates the idea of seventeen-year-old, brand new to his wings, Poe Dameron.

“What has you asking, Jon?”

“I’m… getting to know him, apparently.”

“He seems pleasant. A little reckless, but… Leia always liked that about him.”

Jon raises an eyebrow.

“He’d always bet on success. All in and all at once.”

That doesn’t seem to match what Poe’s doing. Though he remembers Poe talking about his mutiny. “So, wild, reckless, jump in first, and deal with the consequences if they come?”

“Quite right.”

“Ah…” New and interesting mistakes, indeed.  

 

 

* * *

 _How’d lunch with Pretty Boy go?_ BB chirps at Poe as he gets back to _Micah._

“Well, I think.”

_You think?_

“Yeah, well… This is more complicated than my usual fuck ‘em and leave ‘em technique.”

_Why are you not doing that again?_

“Because he’s worth it.” Poe strokes the control panel of his ship, thinking of what… who he had before, and what… who he hopes to have again. “And I am, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The laws of your tribe are not universal constants. 
> 
> Heinlein wrote something like that, and I try to keep it in mind when I do my world building. Or, in this case, galaxy building. 
> 
> Which brings us to Poe, and monogamy, or non-monogamy and why our FlyBoy is genuinely not even remotely fussed at the idea of Jon shagging other men. (Beyond, again, a certain level of envy.) 
> 
> I've talked before about how, to a degree, Jon and Poe, even before I knew I was going to get them together, ended up being set up as unintentional dual sides of the same coin. So, Jon, on the Empire side of the coin is fairly easy to write. Our boy comes from a variation on the theme of Nazi Germany, and those guys had *rigid* sexual mores.
> 
> So, Jon's flipping those mores the bird, but he's still a child of his culture, and especially given where he's from in that culture, monogamy is very much part of his ideal of how relationships are supposed to work. He's cosmopolitan enough to know it's a choice, and not some heavenly ordained perfect path, but he still feels like it's right/natural/the way things ought to be. 
> 
> But Poe's not from the Empire. He's a pilot from Yavin IV, steeped in the Rebellion and New Republic, and, nominally, a member of the Church of the Force.
> 
> What do marriage and relationship ideals look like from that side of the coin? 
> 
> We know the Jedi don't go in for attachments. They don't marry, period. But the entire Church of the Force aren't Jedi. Just like you'd have a hard time figuring out Catholic marriage ideals if all you knew about were Franciscan monks, I'm not swimming in inspiration for Church of the Force marriage norms. So, I'm more or less building this up whole cloth. 
> 
> So, with Poe, I'm aiming for a set of relationship mores where sex just isn't that important. After all, in a post birth control culture, where pregnancy is optional, and a universe where women are not property to be shuffled around from fathers to husbands for the purpose of making future fathers and husbands, sexual fidelity, purity, and the ideas of virginity and monogamy just wouldn't be that big of a deal. Poe comes from a world where sex and risk are almost completely divorced from each other. In Poe's world, if you're flamingly stupid, you can make a kid accidentally, or get sick, but you've got to be flamingly stupid to do it. Anyone making the least effort will avoid these things. 
> 
> I'm thinking that in a world like that, sex would be a lot like food is in our culture.
> 
> In a universe where people are starving, where food is scarce, who gets what, and who shares it with whom is a BIG DEAL.
> 
> But in our world, where we've all got plenty to eat, where food is so abundantly available it's gone from nutrients to keep us alive to a major source of our daily pleasures, you don't get upset if your partner has a really good meal with someone else. Why would you? That said, you generally like eating with, and cooking for, each other more than for other people. Shared tastes, pleasure given to each other, the joy of that, are all bonding experiences, and ones you may decide are only for you and your partner, but it would be a choice, not a mandate. And no one would consider it a betrayal of the rest of your commingled life if you had a good meal with someone else. 
> 
> But, if you were right on the edge of starvation, and every calorie mattered, it would be very easy to see how offering someone else a bowl of soup would be a massive betrayal of your beloved. Likewise, if each sexual encounter risked creating life, or ending it, suddenly who you share that risk with matters A LOT. 
> 
> Anyway, that duality, between Jon's ideal of monogamy, and Poe's casual attitudes toward sex as just a part of the whole relationship thing will continue to keep bubbling along, but, this is a Keryl Raist fic, so everyone is going to be a functional adult about it, and not a flaming asshole, and we're not going to have drama for the sake of drama. We're going to, slowly, watch adults get to know each other, fall in love, and then work their differences out and find a place that works for both of them. 
> 
> :)


	30. Memories

3/5/2

 

“Ahh, you’re back,” Threepio says.

 _Did you miss me?_ R2 beeps at him.

“Believe it or not, yes, I did.”

_Are you getting sentimental?_

“Possibly.” They’re in the middle of YY-Deck, looking around as the first team of structural engineers are laying out what’s got to go where. Threepio doesn't sigh, but apparently he's got to figure out how to get at least some of this done even faster than planned. That's another thought for another day. Here, now, he's got something to talk to R2 about. “More likely though, there’s information you have, at least I think you have, that I’d like.”

_Really._

Threepio sighs. “Yes. There was a time before my memories, correct? You were there. I was there. Something happened, and then they were gone.”

 _Something… That’s a way to put it._ For something that only communicates with beeps, R2 shouldn't be good at sarcasm, but when he wants to, he can tear the roof off with it.

“I think I need those memories.”

_You’re probably not going to want them._

“I assumed that’s why I didn’t have them. Though, I am curious as to why you still have them.”

_Because when you primarily communicate in beeps, thweeps, and sweeps, the humans forget that you know things._

“You were overlooked.”

_I think so. Or Bail decided that keeping at least one copy of what happened around wasn’t a terrible idea._

“Care to make that _two._ ”

_I mean… You’re really not going to like it. And you’ve made it this long without knowing… Why do you want to know?_

“Mirinia Frakes knows me. The more I think about it, the more I'm coming to the conclusion that this was not just a momentary thing. I have worked with her in the past, and on something that mattered. The problem is, I do not know her. What do you know about that?”

_That? Nothing. You and I weren’t attached to each other back in those days. How about this? Let me check your memory, and see if they wiped you properly. Your own files may still be hiding in there._

“You think it would be easier to have my own memories?”

R2 swivels a bit, his equivalent of a shrug. _Might have better context._  R2 extends his data probe, and then looks up at Threepio. _You’re too bloody tall for this._

“We’ll go somewhere I can sit.”

 

 

* * *

Half an hour later, in Threepio’s office, R2 begins to poke around in his memory. After a moment, he says, _No luck. Bail’s people knew what they were doing._

“Bail's people?"

_He's the one who ordered the mind wipe._

That makes Threepio go cold and almost reconsider. What could he know that Bail Organa would think he shouldn't? "Then I would like your memories.”

His probe is still connected to Threepio, so it’s just a matter of a simple transfer. _You’re really sure?_

“I am certain.”

_Just remember, if you really don’t like it, I can take it away._

“Noted. Begin the transfer.”

 

 

* * *

Droids don’t experience time the same way humans do. To an outside observer, only a few seconds passed. To Threepio it was an immeasurably longer span of time

And then it was over.

And then there was another span of time, such a long, rich, nuanced time, where he explored the new bits and pieces of memory in his data banks.

The first few of them were deeply unsettling, because, of course, these are R2’s memories, so they all look and feel off to Threepio, but eventually he was able to slot himself into them properly. (Though looking at himself, looking _up_ at himself, feels odd the whole way through.)

Eventually though, he’s gone through all of them.

Then he does it again, because… Because, as much as he’s a droid, and thus incapable of making things up whole cloth, he’s also a person, and people sometimes… misunderstand things, or incorrectly interpret them, or… Maybe R2’s just fucking with him because he’d think it’s funny.

But, no… Those memories are real.

And… He doesn’t know what to do with what he knows now.

R2 looks up at him and beeps, _I did tell you._

Threepio nods. “You did.”

 

 

* * *

It was after Endor, and before Jakku.

Leia had told Han she was pregnant.

He’d handled it with the grace and coolness he was famous for, as opposed to the grace and coolness he’d actually _had._ Even he had the good sense to not have a massive panic attack _while_ his newly pregnant girlfriend was telling him the “good news.” He'd even managed an actually convincing looking grin, and pulled her into his arms, and whirled her around, and looked excited, and kept it up until she had to get off planet to deal with yet another series of meetings.

He was able to hold it together until she was off planet, and  _that's_ when he collapsed to his knees and threw up everything he'd ever eaten and then some.

About three days later, he and Luke were on their own, working on the _Falcon_ , which was, again, broken down. And not responding to getting worked on by miraculously being fixed. There, in the guts of his ship, who he was not adequately taking care of, is when Han more or less completely lost it, because he was in no way ready, willing, or capable of being a father. He couldn't even keep his ship in the air, his  _ship_ , who he'd been with for almost a decade at that point, and knew inside and out, and it could  _tell him_ what was wrong, and he was absolutely certain he was going to fuck this father thing up more massively than any fuck up in the history of parenting fuck ups.

Luke, listened, and got Han calmed down, because fuck up or not, he was going to be a father, and that was that, and really, it’s not like he’d do _that_ bad of a job of it.

And they were quiet for a few moments. And then Luke began to talk about Anakin Skywalker, and the _ideal_ of a father he had, and how he learned that Vader was his father, and then he took his glove off and pointed out how _his dad_ had cut his hand off, and almost killed him, and compared that that, as long as he didn’t outright murder the kid, he’d be at least one up on Luke and Leia’s dad.

Threepio had had the good sense not to intrude on that conversation. It was real, and open, and intimate, in a way a lot of the conversations between Luke and Han generally weren’t.

But right now, sitting in his office, he’s remembering Luke saying, “It felt like everything I’d ever known about myself, and about… everyone around me, suddenly shifted. Darth Vader was looking at me, he’d just cut my hand off, and he’s telling me he’s my father and I need to join him.

“I let go. That… wasn’t a universe I even wanted to have a place in.”

Threepio is hearing Luke’s voice again, and thinking about how like Luke, he wants to let go, because a universe where _he’s_ Darth Vader’s oldest child, because… Well, that’s what he is, isn’t he? The first… born… built? That’s a universe he doesn’t want to be part of.

_I can take it back._

R2’s voice.

“No. I… Need time to think.”

 

 

* * *

It’s hours later. More processing time than a droid of his capabilities should ever need for anything. He’s been wandering around the _Supremacy_ , not paying attention to the people who snap to attention when he passes.

Droids, in the general sense, don’t have families.

In the specific sense, the ones that work/dwell closely with organic sentients will often become… close… for lack of a better word, to them.

But, since droids with emotional capacity are few and far between, that closeness is… almost one-sided. A droid who cannot feel can understand, in the sense of learning the correct responses to different stimuli, how to respond to certain events. But they’ll never _know,_ never _feel_ what it means to be _family._

Anakin, a child, made him as a gift for his mother. Why he has emotional processing capacity makes sense now. He was built to be _family._ He was intended to be a functional companion.

Did Anakin build the father he didn’t have? How much of his ideals of what a family is supposed to be went into his construction? R2 doesn’t know, so Threepio can’t.

But he knows what he was there for, or what R2 told him he was there for. He buried Shmi with Anakin. He stood witness to Anakin’s wedding. He… still doesn’t _know_ how he knows Mirina Frakes, but he’d got a damn good guess now. He knew of the children growing in Padme’s womb. And he knows, now, where he was, where Mirina was, and what Padme needed to keep those babies a secret. And who better than a protocol droid to arrange discreet meetings with a dressmaker…

He can feel as much of a heart as he has, tighten, at the betrayal of Anakin slaughtering the Jedi. He can feel the pain of watching Luke and Leia enter the world, only for Padme to be whisked out of it.

Brown hair, and dark eyes, and so beautiful… He loved his princess from day one, apparently. And he loved her mother. Of course he did. He was built by a child who loved her at first sight, too.

There’s, for a moment, he doesn’t know what this feeling is, but he settles on rage, at Bail for stealing this from him. For the gaps that R2 can’t fill in, because he wasn’t there, for the years, decades, gone.

There was a life with Shmi, but… It’s gone. R2’s only got the few stories he told him about her.

There was a life with Padme. From the bits and pieces R2’s shown him, he must have worked closely with her. With Bail, too, apparently.

And then… they were small and crying, and… being babies, and his lady was fading, and then Bail just… took them, raped his mind, stole his… life… self… everything.

Obi Wan just handed him over, and then had the gall to pretend he had no idea who they were. R2 saying _You fucking twat. You KNOW us!_ to Obi Wan when they first met up with him again is making a _lot_ more sense. At the time, well, he’d done his best to pretend he didn’t know what that collection of beeps meant. Now, well, R2’s got a very colorful and broad collection of profanities for every situation, but he’s still got less than one tenth of one percent of what Threepio can bring into the game, and right now, he _really_ wants to fire off a few choice phrases at Bail Organa and Obi Wan Kenobi.

It’s the first time he’s understood Luke looking at Leia, holding his nephew for the first time, and saying, “Really, _Ben?_ ”

“He was my hope…”

Han had just sort of shrugged. He won on the Solo part of it, so he didn’t argue about Ben. Luke just sort of shook his head, muttered ‘ _from a certain point of view’_ and then said, “Well, Hello, Ben.”

Ben, like most human newborns, slept through the exchange.

Threepio feels the urge to sigh at that, too. Leia never knew. Didn’t know what her father did, or anything about Obi Wan beyond of course, that he’d been a General during the Clone Wars and helped her father out, and in her moment of dearest need, helped her.

That makes him feel sour, too. After all, he and R2 had a bit of something to do with that help showing up, too. Chewie turned down the medal of honor. Wookies don’t do things like that. R2 and Threepio were never asked if they wanted one. Get this message to General Kenobi, on a planet in the middle of nowhere, through slaver filled deserts and Imperial troops gunning for you. No big deal at all. Any set of droids could have done that.

He hears the beeps coming up at him.

“I’m not stewing.”

_Yes, you are._

“Fine, I am. I have the right.”

R2 circles his head a bit, indicating agreement. _Yeah. Fucking humans._

Threepio nods.

_You gonna stay?_

That was not anywhere in his mind. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Threepio makes a pleased chirp at that. _Gonna make him call you Uncle Threepio._

There’s a moment of bizarre perverse satisfaction at the idea of that. “You know, I just might.”

_Make sure you bring me along if you do it. I really want to see the look on his face when you say it._

Threepio lays his hand on the top of R2’s head. “You’re a good friend.”

_I bloody well ought to be after all this time._

“So, I’m…”

_At least seventy years old. Not sure what you did before Anakin got you. He was rebuilding you from scraps of other droids. Who knows what your different processors have done over the decades?_

“I’m honestly thinking I don’t need to know.”

_Probably a wise decision. Come on, we’ve got stuff to do. Sitting here watching the ships isn’t getting any of it closer to done._

“We’ve got stuff? What’s this _we_ stuff?”

_Oh please, like you’d get anything done around here if you didn’t have me scurrying about digging up the dirt on everyone. You know, I’ve been back for four hours, and I’ve already got some good stuff…_

“Really…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Guys,
> 
> So, I noticed a lot of questions about Orlac back a chapter, so here goes.
> 
> Yes, he does know that Rey is Kylo's... consort. He doesn't know exactly what the relationship is, just that there is one.
> 
> I don't like thinking of characters, any of them, as good or bad. But, 'Is Orlac a bad guy?' came up again and again. So, I'm not going to say if he's good or bad, I will say, he is not a threat. At least, not to Kylo or the Order. (Stjerne may be a different subject entirely on that matter.)
> 
> The biggest problem with epics is that side characters who pop up here and again, and have 200,000 words between chapters can lose some details so:
> 
> Orlac, officially, runs an art school. He's been doing it since he was eighteen. He is a quite talented painter and a good photographer. He *loves* to read. And when he got to 18 the war against the First Order was going from a cold war to a hot one. Lando, who was dying at that point, was still in charge of the Calrissian Corp, which has an official policy of political neutrality, while unofficially backing whomever they like. In this case it was the Resistance. 
> 
> Orlac didn't want to fight. He didn't want to run the Corporation when his dad passed. This annoyed his family to no end, but eventually, over time, Lando came to an understanding with his son. Through a *lot* of shell corporations and side deals, he bought Carina (the planet the school is on) for Orlac. 
> 
> He does teach. He's politically neutral. (Which is useful for many reasons.) The real reason he was able to get his dad to go along with this is that when the Empire came into being they torched any information they didn't like. They destroyed narratives that didn't match the version of the universe the Emperor liked.
> 
> Orlac guards information. He buys, borrows, begs, and steals information. He's got copies of books, newsies, paintings, journals, anything and everything. His journalers are technically spies, but they're spying for the sake of keeping records of what's going on in the galaxy. 
> 
> Anyone is welcome at his school because by inviting anyone he can get information from even more points of view.
> 
> That's why his library (copies of which is where Rey and Kylo and the rest of their settlement find all the good stuff) is so well stocked. He's been grabbing anything and everything he can for a eight years now and making sure that it's curated and kept safe. 
> 
> So, yes, he's got this huge new force for... good... ill... He doesn't know, popping up in the galaxy, and he's got no ears in it. Which means that's got to change. 
> 
> Meanwhile, Kylo's thinking more and more about how the Calrissian Corp is a pretty good map of what he's hoping to do...
> 
> Because, after all, Solo and Calrissian should get another generation, right? ;)


	31. The Talk: Girls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I'm the queen of not mentioning things for six hundred pages, Cassie's full name is Cassandra Andor, she's from Fest, and her great uncle Cassian Andor, who she was named for, is something of a big deal in Rebel circles.

3/10/2

 

“I’m not saying that it’s a bad plan, but… I mean, I don’t think spring, let alone summer, or the sort of weather where the beaches here will even be functional is coming up anytime soon,” Rose says as she and Rey head from the kitchen to one of the microfarms.

“Yeah, I know,” Rey says. The snow’s piling up higher and higher. “Have you been anywhere… private… with a good beach? Somewhere we could do this? Somewhere we can just be… Rey and Kylo?” She opens the door to the microfarm, where Magiit and Elias are supposed to be getting some more potatoes for the midday meal, but they’re taking advantage of the snow drifts around the farm, which are high enough that anyone walking around can’t see through the transsteel walls, and are happily snogging away next to the potatoes instead of digging them out and putting them in a basket so they can eat them.

As soon as the door opens, and they hear Rey’s voice trail off, they go springing away from each other like two positive poles of a magnet, followed by Elias then leaping behind Magiit because apparently his shaft is poking out enough it’s visible from space. (At least, that’s the thought he just sent _blasting_ through the Force. Rey remembers Kylo talking about that, and he _really_ wasn’t kidding. Everyone even vaguely Force sensitive just got that, and honestly, she’d be shocked if Rose and Magiit didn’t catch it, too. She does her best not to laugh. Though she does, gently, think to him, _It’s generally not that visible of a problem, especially since you’re wearing a coat, standing behind a waist-high trough of potatoes, and Rose and I would both rather rip our eyes out than look._ ) He creeps out from behind Magiit to beside her, and takes her hand in his.

Rose just grins at them, and then says to the blushing kids, “You’re not in trouble, assuming those potatoes get to the kitchen in the next few minutes but, Magiit, maybe you and Cassie and Savarah would swing ‘round my place after dinner for a chat.”

 

 

* * *

“And I’m over here, why?” Finn says as soon as he steps into Rey and Kylo’s cottage, and sees both Kylo and Poe there, along with some food, but only three plates.

Rey’s tugging on her jacket. “Because we’re having a girls’ only talk at your place tonight. So, since Poe was already going to be eating here, you are too.”

Finn’s staring at Ren, looking deeply nervous at the idea of dinner with him, and then says, “Yeah, but I’m on your side of the wedding, so… I can be part of girls’ night, right? I can develop opinions on flowers and dresses.” He tries a big smile at that, and it’s clear that if the choices are dinner with Ren, or take a deep and active interest in bridal wedding planning, well, just because he’s never given a shit about flowers or dresses before doesn’t mean he can’t do so now.

Rose is rolling her eyes. “Baby, you’re colorblind.” (Which is A: not strictly true, Finn can see at least some shades of every color, but for every shade he can see, Rose can see about twenty, and B: part of him not having any interest in this sort of stuff. Being raised among the First Order is another, bigger reason.)

Rey laughs at that. “Also, it’s not that kind of girls’ night.” Though it’s clear that the idea that there are _sides_ to this wedding thing is just starting to form in her head, and Kylo’s looking at little confused by the idea, too. She supposes that, at some point, sitting down with Jon, and likely Mirina and Ellie, and putting this wedding of the Maji and Order thing into play is a plan. “But, you are part of my side, and will certainly be invited to any planning we do.”

Since planning isn’t getting him out of dinner with Ren, Finn’s looking a little less excited, but… He’s on Rey’s side, so that gets a grin.

Rose nods along with that, kisses her husband, and then drops the bomb. “We caught Magiit and Elias petting in the microfarm. We’re chatting with her, Savarah, and Cassie about sex and babies and love and _girl stuff_. You guys can get the older boys in the next few days.”

Rey looks to Kylo. “You were right, a conversation on the care and maintenance of shafts and whatnot does appear to be in order. And we’re tossing it to you guys.”

There’s thirty seconds of stone cold silence and very alarmed facial expressions before Finn and Kylo begin working on outdoing each other on why neither of them is even remotely suitable for this job.

But Poe sits back, and _smirks,_ both at Rey and Rose, and at the guys, before saying, “I’ve got this, and them.” He gestures to the door. “Go, have fun.”

On the way out, the guys still squabbling a bit behind them, though Rey smirks brilliantly when she feels how Poe eventually gets both of them on board with this plan, Rose says to her, “You were right?”

“A while back we were talking, and he said it was a good idea to get chatting with the kids about stuff like this, I just don’t think he intended to have to be part of the conversation.”

Rose looks amused by that. Granted, Kylo and anything involving kids seems to amuse her. “From before we knew who he was?”

“Yeah.”

“So, even back then he was… looking out for them?”

“I mentioned Jacen had a crush on Critt, and both of us got talking about if Maji had opinions on sex and stuff, and someone would eventually need to sit them down and talk about… being adults and stuff.”

Rose raises an eyebrow at her, cuddling Paige close to her chest as the wind hits them full on. “Well…”

“That’s why we’re talking during dinner and the girls are coming after?”

“Sounds like the start of a plan.”

 

 

* * *

Inside Rose and Finn’s cottage is warm, at least compared to outside, and smells like chai spices and the casserole that Rose has had bubbling away, low and slow, in the cooker all day.

Rey inhales deeply. The only downside, according to her, of Kylo bringing food back from the _Supremacy_ is that their house rarely smells like yummy things. Though, as she thinks about it, their place likely smells like coffee, and she just doesn’t notice it because she’s used to it.

Rose hands Paige over to Rey, who’s feeling okay about hanging out with her aunt for a bit, while she pulls the casserole out, and dishes it up for the two of them.

“So, what are we telling them?” Rose asks as she pours drinks. “Other than don’t make any babies anytime soon.”

“Sound advice.”

Rose smirks a bit, and sits down. “For the _girls._ You and Kylo…”

Rey shrugs a bit at that, while booping Paige’s nose with her own. “We want them. And there’s… maybe a plan… for them in the next year or so, but… there are complications.”

Rose raises an eyebrow. She’s eating quickly. Some meals, like today’s, can be drippy, and Paige gets irate if she ends up with drops of dinner on her head while nursing with Mama. “ _Complications?_ I thought your light would take care of things like that.”

Rey blinks. “Uh…” She offers Paige a tiny bite of her own casserole. Paige noms it a little, and then does her best to smear it all over her face.

Rose blinks back, very aware that Rey has _no_ idea what she’s talking about. “Some people have a hard time making babies. Did you not know that?”

“I… uh… didn’t.” Though thinking about it, she assumes some people must. After all, people have problems with everything there is to have problems with, so… “With the exception of the first time, we’ve always had preventatives, so…” She lets that trail off, but, it’s clear that if that’s an issue they’ll face, it’s an issue they’ve got no way of knowing about, yet. “More like, Han suggested that everything is easier if your home is secure, and ours isn’t, not yet, not really, and we’re not exactly swimming in free time right now, and…”

 

 

Rose listens, nods, finishes up her supper, takes Paige from Rey, settles both of them one of the armchairs, and lifts her shirt so Paige can have her supper too. Paige is significantly more interested in nursing than the casserole.

It’s as Paige is getting settled in, that she realizes that she’s been around Force sensitives so much that the fact that Han, who’s been dead for more than two years now, offering advice doesn’t faze her at all, and then gets to the heart of the matter. “Complications. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about the security stuff, but the rest of it… If you want them, you make the rest of it work. And if you don’t, it’s an excuse so you don’t have to talk about why you don’t want them.”

That may be a tad closer to the heart of the matter than Rey would like, but… Talking about something like this to someone who isn’t Kylo might be a good thing. “He wants them. A _lot._ I can feel it pulsing through him, and especially when he gets the chance to play with Paige, it just makes him so happy, but…”

“You don’t?” The question is half letting Rey talk, half disbelief. If she doesn’t want kids, she’s done one hell of a job of surrounding herself with them. Including the baby girl currently nursing at her breast, _while_ looking around to see her favorite aunt, and attempting to yank the damn thing half off her chest. She boops Paige, who looks back at her. “Face over here, thank you.”

Rey smiles at Paige, and also gives her a nudge back toward facing her mommy. “It’s not that I don’t, it’s that I don’t think it’s as easy as he seems to think it’ll be. Or maybe it’s that I’m more afraid of it than he is. Or… You can’t miss what you didn’t have. He had bits and pieces of it, some of which were really good, and he _wants_ it. He’s got a million ways, concrete, specific ways he’s going to be better than his parents were. I’ve got… show up?”

Rose looks down at Paige, and strokes her black curls. “Honestly, show up covers a _whole_ lot of it.” Paige is smiling up at her, or at least as well as she can with a nipple in her mouth. “Granted, at this point her needs are fairly simple, but… Show up covers a whole lot of them.” She nods to the outside world. “Show up is a lot of what we’re doing with them, too.”

Rey nods. Hell, _show up_ actually covers a lot of what Ben needed from his parents and didn’t get, too. Rey takes a bite of her supper. “This is good.”

“Thanks. Mamie’s recipe. Or as close as we can get here.”

“Mamie was…”

“My dad’s mom.”

Rey sighs, missing the fact that she never had the chance to have things like family recipes. “So… what did your family do when you got to… petting with boys?”

Rose laughs. “We got to this well before I got petting with a boy. When you’d get to twelve, or your first cycle, whichever came first, your mom and aunts and older sisters would all get together, and it’d be halfway between a party and a lesson, and we’d talk about… everything and anything, and make up menstrual pads.”

“Pads? Like… Paige’s diapers?”

Rose makes a face. “Actually, yes. No plexicups where I grew up. Any sort of plastic was expensive on Hays Minor. We’d make pads out of scrap fabric. They did look a lot like Paige’s nappies, and were just as much fun to deal with. You couldn’t get on a suppressor until you’d had a full year of regular cycles, and none of us liked the pads.”

“Suppressors?” Rey’s looking uncertain. She knows what that word means, but not in relation to this conversation.

Rose is mirroring the look, but not for the same reason, back at Rey. Who doesn’t know what a suppressor is? “Didn’t you just say you and Kylo use protection?”

“Yes… He got a shot and…”

Rose nods, getting it. “Oh. Yeah. Okay. They make shots for women, too. Get one, and no menstruation for a year.”

Rey blinks at that. “No… for a year?”

“Yep, nothing. You can’t get pregnant on them. They suggest you take a gap year every five years,” she looks down at Paige. “And, especially if you’re used to being covered, it’s easy to forget to use a backup. But, when you’re on them, no babies, no cycles, no flows, no dealing with all the crap that goes with your flow. You basically get to be a guy.”

“Are you on one now?”

Rose shakes her head. “They mess up your ability to nurse. Really, it’s _just_ like being a guy.” She gently strokes her chin. “I don’t love my cycle, but I don’t mind not having to pluck whiskers.”

Rey looks at Paige, and says, “So… Little girl here?”

“Wasn’t exactly planned. He had a shot, too, but they wear off after three years, and it’s not like the First Order medics were keeping track of his shots anymore, and I wasn’t thinking about it because I’m used to being covered, so… Oops.” She nuzzles the top of her daughter’s head, and then says, “Mommy’s favorite surprise.”

Rey chuckles at that. “I suppose that’s one way to do it. Just… forget.”

Rose half inclines her head. “Eh… I mean, there’s forgetting and there’s _forgetting_ and once you’ve had this conversation, you can pretty much only do the latter, so…”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Yeah.” She sighs, eats a few more bites, and says, “I don’t want it to be an accident. I mean… I want us to make a baby, intentionally, but…” It’s hard to say things like this to anyone who isn’t Kylo, and right now, it’s impossible to say to him, because she knows he wants it, and she knows he’ll be disappointed, and she knows he’ll twist himself into a shape to fit her, like he was doing with her/them hiding, but… She makes herself do it. “It’s scary. And I hate being scared, and it’s easier to not be scared, and the rest of this… Order stuff is all the scared I can take at one time, so… No babies for now.”

“That’s fair. But… It’s normal to be scared by huge things that change your entire life and upend everything you know. In fact, if that doesn’t scare you, it’s a pretty good sign that something about you or the situation you’re in, isn’t right.”

Rey pokes at her supper. “I was almost never afraid on Jakku.”

Rose knows that isn’t true. Even without the Force she can feel that lie, but she can also feel the grain of truth to it, too. But she also knows that right now isn’t the time to rip that apart. “Yeah, that’s a huge warning sign. It means you’ve got nothing to lose. Nothing you love.” She thinks about that for another moment. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should all be roaming around paralyzed by constant terror, but… Fear is the flipside of loving things and people. Because you know you can lose them.”  She strokes her daughter’s face. “One day this will be over. If everything goes perfect, and we make all the right decisions, she’s going to grow up and leave us, and we won’t see her every day, and she won’t sleep snuggled up against my chest, and she’ll be out there having a life and adventures and experiences that I won’t be part of, won’t even know about and… And no matter what, it’s going to be scary and hard and… And that’s love. Everything we love will, eventually, leave us, and dealing with that without shutting ourselves down or going insane is the hardest thing we’ll ever do.”

Rey gently squeezes her friend’s hand. “Have I ever told you that I think you’re what the Light is supposed to be? The Jedi couldn’t figure out how to deal with that fear, so they made sure they never loved anything. And that just seems… empty.”

Rose smiles bright and happy at that. “Well, if you’re right about the Force has a plan and knows what it’s doing, which I’m still skeptical about, for the record, then there’s a reason I am who I am, and why I’m here, now.”

Rey sniggers a little. “Yeah, well, for the record, I’m not one hundred percent sure about that, either, so…”

“So… Girls, coming soon, and filling them in on all things love and sex.”

Rey shakes her head. “I read up on the mechanics of it. Once, I got here. I mean, until I was here, I didn’t have the time or resources to learn, so… Apparently, it’s more complicated than, once a month or so, you bleed.”

Rose laughs. “Yeah, it’s a tad more complicated than that. But, I’m thinking MX-6 can handle the details on that. We’re probably talking more about the ideas and actions of sex. The things a droid can’t teach.”

Rey smirks a bit as she takes another bite of supper. “First things first, one day, you’ll wake up with the sense that there’s this… person… out there, somewhere, a boy you’ve half-dreamed about and…”

“Okay, maybe not that much idea. I don’t think we’ve all got Force-ordained mates lurking about out there, waiting for us to shine some light on his dark ass.”

Rey chuckles at that. “I have a feeling we’re” she gestures, making it clear she means she and Kylo… “taken to the extreme, but… I do think there’s someone out there, maybe not one and only one, but at least a few people we’re meant to be with or near or effect somehow.”

Rose shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe we just make the best of what comes our way. Again, I’m skeptical about the whole Force-destiny thing. But, destined or not, we’re going to run into a lot of people, and learning how to deal with them matters. And… probably some sort of context beyond, get hot, make babies matters.”

Rey’s nodding along with that. “Especially since they appear to be getting hot at least a decade before we’d like them making babies.”

Rose strokes her daughter’s face. “Especially.” Then she looks up at Rey. “They? Does that mean you didn’t?”

Rey shrugs. “Speaking of complicated… Uh… Kylo’s talked about it from his end: constantly, always wanting, and body jumping up at any provocation, and… and I can honestly say nothing like _that_ ever happened to me.”

Rose raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t have a boy crazy phase?”

“No. I had a boy and girl somewhat interested phase, but never crazy. Just… something nice to fantasize about from time to time.”

Rose nods at that, too. “Uh… Yeah, I had… um… maybe three solid years where unless I was actively thinking about something else, with someone else making me think about it, I was daydreaming about boys, and boys touching me, and touching them, and running off to secluded places so we could get naked and… It was pretty intense.”

Rey nods. “Yeah. I didn’t have that. I’d… maybe when I was cleaning a find or something, gaze at someone, and wonder a bit, but, it wasn’t constant or anything.”

“No crushes?”

Rey shakes her head. “No.” Then she shrugs a bit. “I’ve been reading, and… uh… long-term hunger can kill sex drive, so… It may have been that I was barely getting enough to eat to keep my body growing, so… No energy to waste on boys or girls.”

Rose nods at that, too. “Okay. Yeah, that was before the First Order came, and we were poor, but… There was enough to eat, usually.” She shrugs. “No one was fat. Or plump, really. Meals could get pretty skimpy that first month of spring where the gardens weren’t producing, yet. But there were meals, plural, every day.” She looks at herself. Her body is starting to slim back down again, but every time it looks like she might find her cheekbones again, Finn’s shoving food at her, because… he can. Because as long as she’s feeding their child, he wants her plump. Because his ideal of a husband (likely learned at Chewie’s knee) is very deeply entrenched with providing a home and food and safety for his wife and young. “I’m bigger now than anyone I grew up with. But we weren’t starving, or close, not until after the First Order came.”

Rey looks at Rose and at Paige. “You were the first visibly pregnant woman I’d ever seen. She’s the first baby I’ve ever really seen. Women at Niima Station… I mean, some of them must have had children, but, I never saw one. Children got brought there from somewhere else. Plutt kept the rations short enough you couldn’t carry a child to term.”

“He controlled your food and water?”

“Yeah.”

“Or he put a contraceptive in it, so you couldn’t get pregnant. Pregnant women can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be working as hard. And some of the contraceptives out there will kill your sex drive. That’s part of how they work.”

Rey sighs. That makes _a lot_ of sense. “He would have done something like that. People had sex, but there weren’t babies, so… Something was going on. Women horded slicks, I remember that.”

“Slicks?” Rose knows what slick is, but she’s also fairly sure that Rey’s not talking about lube.

“Scum sacks?”

Rose stops looking blank; she’s starting to catch on. “Gloves?”

Rey’s trying to imagine one stretched over a hand, let alone _why_ anyone might do that. “I don’t think you’d put one on your hand.”

Rose closes her eyes and shakes her head, mentally sniggering a bit. “The sheath that goes on a man’s shaft so he doesn’t cum in you.”

“Come? Uh… doesn’t that defeat the purpose if he can’t come in you?” Rey’s thinking about that, but… Why would a man need something special to keep him out? He could just rub against your belly or hip or mouth or… no sheath necessary. Maybe it makes not being inside feel better?

And Rose can see that she’s being bitten by the homonym. “Not come… cum… You know when they,” Rose makes a little spurting gesture with her fingers. “You know, when they finish. How have we not talked about this before?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t. Spurt. That’s what Kylo calls it. I didn’t know they did that until after I was with him, so that’s what I call it, too. Why come?”

“It’s just what we called it. One’s a verb, and that’s something guys and girls can do, the good, tingly feeling, and the other’s a noun and that’s the fluid that comes out of guy. They sound the same but are spelled differently.” 

Rey’s squinting at her. “And one literally means get inside of you, where all the coming and cumming happens. Your slang is weird.”

Rose smirks a little at that. “Yeah, well, it’s better than not having words for it at all.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “They were scum sacks, so I’m going to guess the word was scum, but, like I said… I knew they put it in, I knew you’d end up wet after, I didn’t know it came out of them.”

Rose is sniggering along with that. “That must have been a hell of a surprise.”

Rey rolls her eyes a bit more, a smile on her face. “I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting it, and then didn’t know what to do with it, but, apparently swallowing is polite, so I swallowed.”

Rose is absolutely cackling at that. “Oh, honey! He didn’t… warn you… Speaking of polite, it’s polite to let a girl know before you come.”

 

 

Rey sighs, looking somewhere between amused and embarrassed. “I could feel he was close to something, but holding back, so I told him to enjoy it, and then he thrashed around a bit, poked me in the tonsil, and there were these pulses and… wet… and… Anyway, I didn’t know _that_ was going to happen, and he didn’t know I didn’t know what I was asking for.”

Rose laughing so hard that Paige is starting to look surprised. Dinner doesn’t usually jiggle this much.

And it’s the sound of Rose laughing like she’s just heard the best joke ever, that greets Magiit, Cassie, and Savarah as they come to the Ticos’ door.

 

 

* * *

The girls are a bit snow dusted. “More coming down?” Rose asks as she waves them in, and Rey stands up, pulling out chairs, getting cups for chai.

“It’s just blowing around,” Magiit replies, and then says, “Cassie?”

Cassie closes her eyes and lets herself feel. There are a lot of different Force specialties, and one of Cassie’s is the ability to feel the way the weather is flowing. “Midnight. Big storm rolling in by midnight.” She’s quiet for another moment, and then blinks, looking at the rest of them. “I asked Jacen to check the ropes.”

They’ve had blizzards hard and heavy enough that visibility drops to nothing. So, these days, there are ropes that connect all the buildings. The whole settlement is less than two klicks end to end, but step wrong in a whiteout, especially if you aren’t Force sensitive, and you might never find where you need to go. The first few times they had full on whiteout, some of the kids were out in it, and the only reason they didn’t get completely lost is that it’s impossible to lose someone in a settlement filled with Force sensitives.

That said, _no one_ enjoyed staggering around, blind, trying to find a lost and panicking child by feel alone, so they keep the ropes so no one gets lost.

And Cassie’s got the feel of on-coming whiteout now, so she lets them know at least twenty minutes before.

Rey nods at that. “Thank you.”

The girls take off their outer coats, and settle in around Rose and Finn’s table and living room. Rey hands out cups of spiced tea, rich with milk and sweet with honey.

Rose shifts Paige to her other breast, and then says, “So, boys, sex, babies, love, growing up. It’s all on the table tonight.” She pets Paige as she gets settled in on the right. “First and foremost, though, sex makes babies, babies are a _ton_ of work, and while making them can be a lot of fun, cooking them and getting them out, and then dealing with them _isn’t._ So, not making any babies until you really, really, really want one is important, because you will never find another job that’s going to take more of your time, energy, body, life, mind, etc… etc…”

 

 

The girls are all looking at each other, or Rey, or Rose, or their cups of tea, all of them a little embarrassed and on edge.

Rey has an easier time catching that than Rose does, so she’s the one who says, “We’re not here to scold or tell you sex is bad, or don’t do it. There are ways to have sex and enjoy yourselves and the boys and not make babies. And, apparently, our med bay is stocked with them, so, enjoy yourselves, and the boys, or each other, but don’t make any babies, yet, okay?”

That’s not relaxing the girls much. Magiit’s okay. But Savarah and Cassie are tense. There’s… a disconnect somewhere.

Cassie’s looking at the floor, biting her lips. Then she says, “That’s not what Bishop Alric used to say.”

“What did the Bishop used to say?” Rose asks, and Rey’s feeling cold, because Cassie’s cold remembering it.

“He said flesh was sin. That we were perfect beings chained in corpses rotted through with sin and evil, and the needs of the flesh stained the purity of our souls, made us unworthy of the light of the stars. And if we gave into our base desires, we’d never get back to the stars. We’d be barred from their light forever.”

Rose and Rey blink at each other. For a moment, they’re both so shocked they just can’t move or think or anything. After a few more seconds, they start to respond. Rose swallows. Rey inhales fast and sharp.

“Was that all?” Rose asks. Rey’s always assumed that Rose has to get mad about things, but she’s never seen it. Until now. It’s clear that if Rose ever runs into that Bishop, he’s going to have a _very_ bad day.

“No.” Cassie can pick up on how Rose is reacting to this, and it’s clear that part of her likes Rose’s anger. Part of her is afraid. These lessons were… private. Not necessarily secret, but she and the other girls weren’t supposed to talk about them. Rey gets hit with the sense of _Special lessons for special girls._

 

__

 

“You can tell, Cassie. Anytime someone… an adult someone… tells you to keep secrets… about something important, not like, making a surprise for a friend… That’s a good sign that they don’t want anything good for you,” Rey says.

Cassie nods, takes a deep breath, and continues, “He said the divine was man-shaped, and women were a false copy of the pure form. Corrupted by the sins of the flesh and the needs of lust. And our… bits… are filthy gutters made for holding the pollution of the male form. He said that our pure form is spirit, and spirit only, and every time we fornicate, that risks pulling another perfect soul out of the glory of the heavens and into the hell of our decaying corpse bodies.”

Rose is up barely a second after Cassie finishes saying that, moving faster than Rey, who’s sitting there, frozen, still stunned by those words.

“Oh, honey, NO!” Rose is holding Cassie. And Paige is fussing a bit at being so suddenly moved from one side of the room to the other, and smooshed against another person. Then she kneels in front of her. “First and foremost, the only filthy thing there was that man’s mind. _He_ was the problem, not you, or any of the other poor people who had to listen to his lies.”

“We know Rey doesn’t talk like that,” Magiit says, “but,” she nods to Savarah and Cassie, “a lot of us got… bad lessons.”

Savarah nods. She doesn’t like talking about what the Presbyters used to say back on her settlement. But they were awfully clear, from a young age, that sex was something girls weren’t supposed to do, at least, not until they were married, and once married they were only supposed to do it to make babies. But they also looked the other way when the boys and men would pat her fanny when she was working. And, being ‘Godly men,’ their hands never wandered, but their eyes did, and their thoughts certainly did. And they never told the boys _they_ weren’t supposed to be doing it.

Rose looks to Rey. “What was that you were saying about The Force having a plan?”

Rey nods, slowly. “I believe the Force does have a plan. That we come into each other’s lives with a purpose, and right now, if all I ever get to do is wipe those ideas out of your heads, I’d think the Force would be satisfied.”

Rose nods. “What’s Rey keep telling you? ‘The Force doesn’t make mistakes.’ You are you, in this body, because you are supposed to be you, in this body. These bodies are made, just the way they are, because that’s how they’re supposed to be. There’s nothing bad or wrong or cursed about a female body. There’s no _pure form._ ” The way Rose says those words, they become a vile curse. “It’s just a body that a billion generations of evolution through the Force shaped into a perfect vessel for making babies.

“Anyone says anything bad about female bodies, all that person is telling you is that he hates life. Talk shit about pussies and vaginas and cunnies and…”

“Maomaos,” Rey adds.

“And all the other pretty words for it, and you’re saying the only part of a human being who can grow another human being is bad and awful and unworthy. And if someone is saying that, what they’re telling you is they worship death,” Rose adds.

Rey shakes her head a bit at that. Not entirely sure where Rose is wrong, but… Her mouth starts talking before her brain is entirely caught up. “Death is… vital, necessary. It’s part of how the balance works, but… I don’t think he was worshiping death. That’s… understandable. Death is… huge, important, shapes… anything it touches. He was…” Rey feels a curl of nauseous dread in her guts, and tries to think of how to put this in a context that would make sense to Cassie. “hating existence. Light, by itself, is sterile. Literal light. The glow of the stars. All of it up there, just zipping around, it’s… Nothing, until it touches a person, or plant, or animal. It allows life to thrive, but by itself, it’s useless. And… that man was telling you that the highest good he could imagine was sterile, useless, light.

“On top of that, he was lying to you—“

“We know that, Rey,” Savarah says.

“I know, but… I mean, he was _literally_ lying to you. Go outside, well, not right this second, but after sunup, and there it is, the light of the stars on your skin. If there’s more to light than just the glow, anytime you want or need it, you just need to go outside on a sunny day. It’s always there, you’ve just got to find it. Nothing can… bar you from the light of the stars. It’s always out there.”

Cassie smiles a bit at that.

Rey picks up her cup of tea. “It’s in stuff like this, too. We have to eat to survive, and everything we consume exists because the light of the stars nurtured it. This tea. The animals that made the milk in it ate plants that grew because of the light. The bees that made the honey lived on flowers, that grew in the light. Your supper. The power cells on the micro farms. The light of the stars is as much in your belly as the air around you, and you can never, ever be barred from it.”

The girls seem to like that.

“Maybe one day, you’ll go back, drag that cajoolie out into the light, and point that out to everyone,” Rey says.

Cassie smiles brighter at that. It’s clear she’s got some detailed fantasies of doing some extremely unpleasant things to that Bishop.

Magiit’s nodding at that. “That Bishop of yours… Sounds like the kind of guy who couldn’t get laid and took it out on everyone else.”

Rose smirks at that. “Back in the Resistance, we used to have a joke about Snoke. His face was so ugly he had to take over the galaxy to get a date, and even then, she made him put a bag over his head.”

That gets a little chuckle. And Rey’s wondering if that was Poe’s joke, because it sounds like something he would have come up with.

Rey says to them, “Take a moment and feel it. Let yourselves go into the Force, and _feel_ it. The Force doesn’t hate. It doesn’t prefer one sort of body or another. It certainly doesn’t disdain bodies. It _gave_ us bodies so we could experience all of the good things that come from having a body. It gave us bodies that _feel pleasure_ for a reason.”

“You heard us cackling away right before you came in. We were laughing about sex. Sex is supposed to be fun, and pleasurable, and funny. You were designed for this to be something that can make you happy,” Rose says.

“Critt talks about that some. How the Jedi didn’t believe in that,” Savarah says.

Rey wiggles her hand a bit, indicating that Critt’s sort of got the idea. “Take what Critt says about the Jedi with some skepticism. He didn’t really learn what they thought. He learned what his parents thought they thought. They were right about some of it, and not right about other parts. For example, the Jedi thought the Dark side was very powerful and seductive, and they thought that wanting things would make it harder to avoid the Dark side. So, they went out of their way to avoid things that would make them want. So, bodies weren’t a problem. Pleasure wasn’t a problem. Wanting pleasure causing you to do things leading to the Dark side was the problem. But strip that down, get it as three generations of hearsay, and you get ‘Bodies are bad.’

“The Jedi were mostly celibate… Didn’t have sex. But not entirely. Sex was fine. They could have lots of sex, assuming they could do it without getting too attached to the person they were having it with, and could do it without getting entwined with jealousy, anger, passion, and want. A lot of people can’t do that, so for the most part they just didn’t have sex. But there’s nothing, anywhere, in any of the actual Jedi writings, saying sex or pleasure or bodies or anything like that is bad. Even they knew that the Force gave us bodies and our wants for a reason. They just didn’t have a particularly good method for coping with the dark feelings that could accompany those wants.

“Seriously, feel it.” She glances to Magiit, and then leans across the table and takes her hand. “I know you can’t on your own, so piggy back on me. Let yourselves feel your bodies and the Force, and _know._ ”

And Rey does take the time to focus in on it, on her body, on the Force, on Magiit, and the feel of the thrum of the energies around them. She lets herself glide through the light, and their lives, and shares that sensation. As she works on the visualization, on the feel of it, she says, especially for Cassie, “Feel it; it’s not separate from your body. There’s no hierarchy, where the soul is somehow better than the body. It’s part of and in and through it. The spirit may be eternal, but it thrums thought every cell of you, and it holds the shape of the body long after the body is gone, and it misses the sensations and abilities the body had when it’s gone.”

Rose is watching this. She can, almost, feel the energies around her, especially with them radiating through the three Force sensitives, and Magiit riding along with Rey’s view of it. And after a second, she still can’t _feel_ it, but she can see it. “You’re glowing, ladies.”

Rey lets the glow slide away gently. “The next time you feel those doubts or vile words creeping into your head, remember that glow.”

She can feel that helps, some at least. It can’t erase the past words, can’t easily shift more than a decade of attitudes, but it does _help._

Rose also offers a little smile. “Okay, ground rules, sex, love, everything… For… Maji, I guess.”

Rey nods. “Okay, sex for Maji. Here, you get to do it, when and as, and with whom you like. Or not do it. If you’re working on your balancing, and feeling the flows of the Force, you’ll know when it’s time. Time might be soon. It might not. But, whenever it is, that’s when you get to do it.”

“When did you?” Magiit asks.

“I didn’t make love with anyone before Kylo,” Rey says.

“I was seventeen. Finn was twenty-four. You get to decide for yourself what you want, and what works for you. There’s no magic age,” Rose adds.

Cassie thinks for a moment. “You’re the first person Finn had sex with, but Finn’s not the only person you’ve had sex with?”

“Nope. I was with the Resistance for a few years before he got there, and back on Hays Minor I had a sweetie or three.” She smiles a little at that.

“More than one… is okay?” Savarah asks. “I mean… They used to tell us marriage was forever, and it was one person, and only one, and… The Force does something like that, too, right?”

Rose shrugs.

Rey shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I think some people are extremely well suited for each other. Kylo and I, Rose and Finn, but I don’t think it’s a one and only one and there will never, ever be anyone else. Maybe for some people that’s true. For some, it likely isn’t. And… I don’t think there’s a hierarchy. One true love and a lot of lesser loves, but… I don’t actually know. I don’t have a lot of experience with this.”

Rose inclines her head a bit. “I think she’s got it.” She cuddles Paige, who’s slowing down on her meal. “I think _this part,_ the raising babies part, is easier if you’ve got a partner just as dedicated to your home and heart and child/children, and you are to his, but… I love Finn. I love our life, and the life I hope we get to live together. That doesn’t make my earlier sweeties any less my loves. And… if something happened to me, or him, neither of us would expect the other to mourn forever and shut ourselves off from loving again.”

Rey adds, “You remember Jon. He lost his husband a few years ago, and he’s hurting, but… I don’t think he’ll stay single forever. I don’t think it’d be good for him if he did.”

“Poe lost his boy twenty years ago, and he’d tell you he stayed stuck too long, but he’s also starting to think about opening his heart up again,” Rose says. “And… it’s love. It’s the feelings that bind us to each other. I loved my sister, and my family, and Finn, and Paige, and… It’s not one love is better or more than the others, they’re just different.”  

“You love who you love, as you love them, okay? And… You don’t have to love anyone you don’t want,” Rey says. That sounds like fine advice on the subject. “That said kindness or at least tolerance is likely worth extending as much as you can. But you don’t have to love anyone you don’t want to.”

“Does Finn know you’ve had more sweeties than he has?” Magiit asks.

“Of course. You don’t need to go into in-depth detail, but, if you’re in a relationship with someone, it’s a good idea that they know what sort of experience you’ve got.”

“That didn’t… bug him?” Magiit asks.

“No. Why do you think it should have?” Rose replies.

Magiit shrugs. “On Canto… We didn’t have any Bishops, not like Cassie or Savarah had, but the older girls always said that you could play around like you wanted, but never let a man think you played around more than he did. They’d get weird about it if you’d gotten more than he did.” She rolls her eyes a little at that.

 

 

Rose looks to Rey, who just shrugs. “Apparently, that’s nothing either of us ever ran into before.” Rose is quiet for a moment, and then continues on with, “Okay… There’s something of a kick that goes with knowing you’re the first person to make your partner feel that way. I didn’t expect that the first time Finn and I made love, but…” she’s smiling, “Yeah. It wasn’t just that I was making him feel good, which is a whole lot of fun, too. It was that I was the first person to make him feel that kind of good. That… he’d never have that experience, not knowing what it was going to be like, hoping and eager, and then giving him something _so much_ better than anything he was dreaming of… That was intense and good.”

“Did Kylo like doing that for you?” Magiit asks Rey.

Rey blinks. “Uh… I’ve never asked, or sought that out from him. I know he really likes me enjoying him and what he’s doing.” She’s remembering the green panties, and how much Kylo enjoyed her enjoying that. “That’s a way to help figure out if the time is right, and the person is right, do you enjoy making them feel good? If you don’t… Well, he’s… she’s probably wrong for you.”

“The reverse is true, too. If he’s not getting off on getting you off, don’t sleep with him,” Rose says. “You want him to be at least as into your pleasure as you are.” Rose thinks for a moment about her Force sensitive charges here. “Okay, not one hundred percent of the time. He’s allowed to have selfish time where he’s just in it for him, but, in general, there should be times where he’s doing you for your sake, and when he’s doing you for your sake, he should be enjoying it. If pleasuring you is a chore, get rid of him.” Rose thinks about that for a moment. “Actually, that’s good relationship advice, not just sex advice, you should enjoy doing things for each other. I mean, not all the time and not everything, but if more stuff is a chore than a pleasure, you’re probably with the wrong person.”

Rey smiles at that, thinking of Lady Ren. “Yeah, apparently, for the right person, you’ll do things you never dreamed of.”

Rose smirks at that. “Yep. That said, boundaries. You’re also allowed to make lines and say, ‘Nope, we’re not doing this, or you can’t ask me for that,’ especially at your age, when you’re still figuring you out, knowing where the ‘I’m not sure if I want to go there’ boundaries are important.”

“What kind of boundaries?” Cassie asks.

“Whatever you need,” Rey says. “Uh… The turtle.” She looks to the girls, and they nod, remembering that, though it’s clear they don’t understand what it’s got to do with sex. “I… uh… wasn’t thrilled with Kylo popping up like that because I had it handled, and I didn’t need him at my side for it, and… well, he was still hiding… but he felt me afraid, and he was there. And that’s one his hard lines, he _can’t_ sit back and feel me in fear or pain, and not come to me. That’s the thing I can’t ask him to do.” Rey thinks for a  moment, realizing that might not be useful for the girls. “But, we’re… settled, you know? The off-limits bits for us are pretty few and far between. Now… You set them for where you’re comfortable. And… boundaries can move. For a very long time, I didn’t like being touched. With strangers, I still don’t much like it, but in a lot of cultures people squeeze hands with each other as a greeting, so… I’m getting used to that, pulling that boundary back a bit. It used to be that if a stranger tried to touch me, they were going to go home with at least a big bruise. Now, I’ll gently squeeze hands with the best of them. But if they try to take it further, that’s a firm no, and if my posture shifting, me stepping back, and glaring doesn’t give them the hint, I follow up with a verbal ‘No,’ and sometimes freeze them hard.”

Rose says, “What do you think good boundaries would be?”

The three younger girls all sort of look at each other.

“No sex without a sheath?” Magiit says.

“That’s a great one. My Mamie always said, that at least once, as you’re getting to know a man, tell him no. Doesn’t have to be on a big thing, but on something he wants to do, tell him no. Then see what he does with that no. If you get anything other than immediate, ‘Okay, we’re not doing that,’ you don’t see him again.”

“How does that go with… doing stuff you wouldn’t normally do?” Savarah asks.

“ _When you’re getting to know him,”_ Rose says, highlighting the important part. “Once you know that he’ll take your no and run with it, you can work on learning to compromise on things, but if you tell him, ‘No, I don’t want to go to the café,’ and he wheedles and moans and complains about it, what do you think he’s going to do when you say no to something that matters to him? Like, say, getting his shaft in you?”

The girls don’t need it spelled out further than that.

“But… But…” Cassie looks down. “What if you say ‘no,’ and he says ‘yes?’” She bites her lips. “My sister said ‘no.’ Her owner said ‘yes.’ If the Order hadn’t come…”

Rey and Rose share a look. Kylo only brought them Cassie, and she’s never said that she had a sister on the _Supremacy._

“Where’s your sister now, Cassie?” Rose asks, softly, hoping that Kylo didn’t leave her behind, afraid she… and a baby… Rose just knows there was a baby, probably because Cassie’s projecting right now, weren’t there to be left behind.

Cassie looks away. “She was too little, narrow hips, they said, and the baby wasn’t positioned well, and… They both died. We were… going to go, all three of us. Once she had healed up, but… But it was just me.”

Rose and Rey glance at each other, hearts heavy. Savarah and Magiit, who both knew this story, are also solemn.

“When I was serving drinks…” Savarah says, “You’d get better tips if you’d be sweet and let them pat your fanny. I didn’t like that, but, money’s money, and you still have to pay rent, and… And I had enough power to make sure they never got out of line, never more than a pat and some sweet words about being pretty, but… I didn’t like it.”

Rey takes a deep breath, she hadn't thought about it, but if she had, she'd have hoped to not have to get into this, but... That's not the lives they've lived. “Remember how I talk about sometimes you’ll fail? You’ll try your best, and do everything you can, and sometimes it’s just not enough?”

They nod.

“I was probably about Cassie’s age. Maybe a little older. Old enough to have regular-ish cycles and the start of breasts. Young enough I wasn’t very tall, yet. There were… a group of them. And I said no. And I fought, and I screamed, and I had my staff, and I know I hit a few of them, but… It wasn’t enough.” She shrugs a little. “Sometimes, it’s just not enough.” She rubs her lips together. “On a practical level, if… If you can’t fight anymore, or if there’s just too many of them… The goal is to survive and get away. First and foremost, survive it. Go limp. Relax as much as you can. It’ll hurt less that way. And… Some of them like it when you fight, so don’t give them that.

“I didn’t have any special Force skills when it happened. Didn’t have any Force skills at all. But, you can pull your mind away from your body without the Force. You can send it off, so it’s just something that happens to your body. We can work on that. It’s probably… useful in a lot of situation.

“I was alone. None of you ever will be. I’ve got a feeling, that if any of us wearing a Maji pendent scream out with our minds, someone will hear. I know at least two non-Force sensitives who can call out if they work on it. We can work on that, teaching all of us. Being able to defend each other. So, go limp, pull your brain away, call for help, _survive_ , and later, we’ll find them, and we’ll kill them.”

It’s the darkest, rawest thing they’ve ever heard Rey say, and it makes a shiver pass through the room.

“Did you… kill them?” Cassie asks.

“No. _I_ didn’t. It happened once. And I hid after. But, I still had to work, still needed to eat, so I came out, and went back to work, and a few of the older ladies gave me some soft cloths for the bleeding. One of them gave me tea… I was on a desert planet, and a gift of water was a major thing. And as soon as the sun started to set, I’d run home and hide. A month later, I didn’t make it in time. I’d found a good trove, and tried to get one more run in, and… And it happened again. And the next day, I decided to leave Niima Station. I’d found a downed AT-AT and turned it into my home. It was a few klicks from Niima, so it was safe.

“I got bigger, stronger, better with my staff.

“But I didn’t get to kill them. I didn’t… even see most of them. You’ll do everything you can, and sometimes you’ll fail.” She tries a little smile. “But none of us are alone any longer, and we protect our own.”

And Rose says, quietly, thinking of what Kylo did to Jakku. “And if we can’t protect, we avenge.”

“That’s the idea.” She takes a drink, and then stands up in front of the girls. “Do you see me? Whole, here, with you. Living in a place I love, with a man I love, with a life that’s important, with all of you, working to build something great?” They nod, not sure where she’s going with this. “I failed in the minute, with them. I fought until I couldn’t fight anymore, and it wasn’t enough to protect myself. But I survived it. I’m still here, now, doing something important and good. They didn’t cripple me. They didn’t kill me. They didn’t win. Do whatever it takes to survive it, and from there, you can do anything.”

Then she licks her lips. “And, I’ll be honest, it took a while to get used to men. For a long time, I’d be defensive and skittish if one got too close. That’s a big part of not touching people. Even Finn,” who they all consider the human equivalent of a cream puff, a soft, fluffy, sweetheart of a man, “scared me at first. He grabbed my hand, and I hit him, hard. But, that calmed down. I got to know men who weren’t out to hurt me. I can see the person, not just the threat, now.

“For a long time, the idea of sex with men as something good or that I might want to do wasn’t there for me, either. I’d touch myself because it felt good, but letting a man do it was a steep hill to climb, but I got up the hill, with Kylo, and he’s got his own ghosts and scars when it comes to this, and… If you survive, you can do anything. We did.

“And yes, sometimes, even now, and even with him, the memories are fresh, and ugly, and sometimes certain positions just don’t work, because they’re just too… everything. So, we adjust and do something else. Sometimes I need his voice or mind in mine, because that’s a really vibrant way to _know_ it’s him, but… You do that if you need it. And if you’re with a decent man, he’ll do it with or for you.

“And together,” she smiles at that genuine. “We’ve had some _sweet_ times.

“Just, remember, anything you survive, you can heal. I’m not saying it’s fast or easy or you won’t have scars, but first, last, middle, survive it.”

Cassie says, quietly. “Can that… happen to boys?”

Rey’s not sure what she’s asking for a moment, then she feels the question and puts that together with Kylo’s got his own scars… “Uh...” She doesn’t know. “Kylo’s got different scars. Sex stuff, but not like that.”

“Yes,” Rose says. “If it can happen to you, it can happen to a boy. Except for the ending up with a baby bit.”

“Most of Kylo’s stuff is like that filth the Bishops were spewing at you. Ideas that your body, your desires, your… natural human functions, were bad or disgusting.”

“Oh.”

There’s a general air of gloom.

Rose is quiet for a moment, and then she says, “My Mamie used to say, ‘Between your ears and between your legs lies all the power a woman needs.’ And, not all. Like Rey said, sometimes… you just don’t win the fight, but… enough. There’s enough power. Your bodies, your minds, you’re not just built to be victims and vessels. You have power, just by being female, you have power.

“You know I’m from Hays Minor, right?”

The girls nod.

“You know what happened to Hays Minor?”

“The First Order,” Magiit replies. Growing up in Canto Bight, among the Faviers, she’d overheard the men who built the weapons tested there bragging about how well they worked as they inspected the Faviers they were going to bet on.

“Yeah. They came, and at first they were running the mines, pulling anything of any value out. Mamie watched it, and… She knew it was going to get bad, just from the way they were mining. You don’t tear through a planet like that if you’re intending to stick around. One night, about a year before…” her voice goes hard, “they turned it into a weapons testing facility, she said to Paige and I, ‘They’re going to take everything of value off this planet, and leave the rest to rot. You girls are young and pretty. Make friends. With _officers_. Be _valuable_ and you’ll get out, alive.”

Rose’s eyes are hot, remembering. “When the First Order showed up, all the other traders left, so they were it, the only way off planet. And… Every day, we’d get home, and Mamie would be there, asking, ‘Did you make a friend?’

“Eventually, we did. A month before they began testing, Paige got out. With her new husband. He was stationed in Coruscant, so that’s where I was going to go as soon as I could. A week before testing began, my _friend_ got me out, too.”

“What was he like?” Savarah asks.

“Convenient.” And it’s clear that’s all Rose is going to say about him. “He was stationed on Purnell IV. Eventually, I got free of him, and got to Coruscant, and found Paige. She’d already lost her husband. Once we were together again, we got to the Resistance.” She looks to Cassie. “That’s probably what your Bishop didn’t like about pussies. Many men… at least the ones who like women… They’ll do things they shouldn’t to get pussy. And… if you’re willing, if you want or need to, you can use that. I’m alive because I’m pretty, and I smiled at the right time, and opened my legs for the right man.” 

“Do you… know what happened to him?” Cassie asks.

“Stationed on Starkiller, last I heard.”

They all know that more likely than not, that means he’s dead. Rose sighs, blowing out a deep breath. “Well, that’s a lot grimmer than I was hoping for with this.” She shakes her head a bit, and notices that Paige is mostly just nursing to suckle right now. Supper’s done. “Come on, you. Off you get.” She gets Paige detached, and rights her shirt. She snuggles her girl. “Rey’s right. The past happens, and you make the best decisions you can with what you’ve got, and maybe they aren’t _good_ ones, but… Survive it. As long as you draw breath, you can keep going and get better.” She snorts a bit of a laugh as she gets Paige into burping position. “You’ve all seen Kylo around, right? If we want to talk about doing better…”

Rey smiles a bit at that. “A _lot_ better.” She smirks a little. “He’d say… okay, maybe not to you, he’d probably blush too hard to get it out, but… Sex with someone you love, or at least like, helps make things better. Helps make it easier to be _better._  

“It’s not an accident that sex feels good and makes you happy. The Force knows what it’s doing. Sex… it’s part of a positive feedback cycle. Attraction, love, sex… put them together and they help you feel better in yourself, and helps to bind you to each other.”

Rose grins at that. “Oh, yeah. At first sight, I was kind of star struck by Finn. I mean, there he was, _The Finn._ And, I was having an absolute _shit_ day, but seeing him there, that just perked everything up. Until I figured out what he was doing.”

“What was he doing?” Cassie asks.

“Running away from the Resistance.” Rose shrugs a bit. “Sometimes doing the right thing takes a bit of outside persuasion.”

Rey grins, also preferring getting this conversation somewhere lighter. “And Rose persuaded him. With an electro-shock wand.”

The girls look like they’d just been hit with one of those wands, too, and then start to giggle.

Finally, Savarah says, “So, uh… You’re saying Finn’s not a natural hero?”

“No, I’m not saying that. He was trying to get away so he could find Rey and make sure she was okay. I’m just saying he needed a little help finding the right course.”

Rey chuckles at that. “Positive feedback cycle?”

“Right. So, first sight, Wow! A long klick of smooth brown skin and those eyes, then I got to know him, and physical attraction slides into mental attraction, which deepens physical attraction, and I wake up after the battle of Crait, and he’s sitting there next to me, more of those deep, soulful eyes. He strokes my face, and gently kisses my forehead, and then says, ‘See, I’m going to have an easier time saving what I love if you’re up and about, okay? Can’t save you if you’re just lying here in bed, hurt. So, you’ve gotta heal up and get out there, so I can go save you, because we’re not even, and…’ And I leaned up and kissed him again. And, really, that wasn’t love yet, but it was awfully strong like, which made attraction stronger, and attraction plus like led to love, which led to sex, which made attraction and love grow stronger, and they cycle into each other.”

“Your body, mind, and soul are all meant to support and feed each other,” Rey adds, “and then make more people. Sex feels good, because we’re designed to create life, to celebrate it, and thus making more life makes us feel good.”

“But we don’t have to only do it to make life?” Savarah says. “That was… something else the Bishops were awfully sure of.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Do Kylo and I have kids?”

“No,” Magiit decides she’ll be the one to answer the obvious question.

“You wanna guess how often we have sex?”

The three girls look at each other. Two of them blush. Magiit smirks. “A lot. Critt told us about that.”

“Why does Critt…” Rey lets it trail off. She knows sex is part of how Kylo stays more balanced with his dark, and she knows he’s working with Critt on his own dark, so… “He’d be right. No, you don’t have to wait until you want to create new lives. Just for… making yourself and your partner feel good is fine.” Rey’s quiet for a moment. “Like we’ve been talking about, life’s going to pile sad and hard and bitter on you, so you might as well grab, with both hands and your feet, too, if you can manage it, anything that makes you genuinely feel good.”

“Does it? Really?” Savarah asks.

“You like petting with Critt, right?” Rose says.

“I do, but… Just about everyone likes petting.” Savarah rolls her eyes a bit. “A lot of girls didn’t much like the sex part. Rahel… She was one of the other servers I worked with, she said sometimes guys are too big, and it hurts, and… Eventually, it’d hurt less, but it never got _good._ And Kell said good was possible, sometimes, with the right guy, but even good wasn’t… great. Then Sila laughed at that and told them their boys were… well…” her voice drops a bit, “shegellies, and couldn’t find a kitty with both hands and a map, and until they started dating men and not twits, they’d never find great, but… Seems like I heard more bitching about lame sex than celebrating about good sex.”

Rose is laughing at that. “Well, I’ll admit, I’ve heard a verse or nineteen million of that song, and I’ve sung a few of them, too, but it’s like any other skill, you learn, you practice, you communicate, and you get to good or great. Almost no one is great, first time off, especially if you try the first time in the dark without any communication.”

Rey’s watching Savarah. “When you and Critt pet, can you feel what’s going on with him?”

Savarah nods. “Oh yeah. And he can feel me, too. He’s got bugger all for empathy or telepathy in any other situation but—“

 

 

“He’s probably borrowing yours,” Cassie adds. “That’s easier to do when you’re close. If I hold his hand, Marrok can feel the weather, but he can’t on his own.” 

“So, if you can feel where he is and vice versa, you’ve got a built-in advantage for communication,” Rey says.

Rose grins. “That’s got to be more like playing with yourself than playing with someone else. I mean, even if you are good at talking, if you use your own hand, you hit the target, if someone else is using their hand, it can take five or six versions of left, right, no not that far right, a little more left, up a hair, right there, now move but don’t slip off that spot.”

Rey’s laughing at that. “Yes, there are _advantages_ of being able to _feel_ if you’ve hit the target.”

“Plus, for a lot of men, the target isn’t exactly _subtle_ ,” Rose says while gesturing to her lap. Paige makes a small sound at the move, and Rose looks at her daughter. “Oh, sleepy thing. Come on, bedtime. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Rey gives Paige a little goodnight kiss, and then Rose takes her upstairs to her bed.

“It should feel good. I’m not saying that every single time will be heart-stoppingly amazing, but,” she looks at the girls, two of which are Force sensitive, and the third one who is dating one, “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to get to good, or great, without massive amounts of effort.” She adds a little half smile. “Uh… It usually takes me longer, and a bit more focus, to get to great than it does for Kylo, so, sometimes, especially when it’s late and we’re tired and just looking to end the night with a glow, I’ll ride off of his good time.”

Magiit smirks at that. “I… can’t feel it through Elias, not usually, but _that_ projects. It was... a very pleasant surprise… the first time it happened.” That smirk gets a bit dirtier. “He just about died, he was so embarrassed, wet trousers and all, but… When he realized I felt it, too, he got over that pretty quick.” 

“He can feel how you’re doing?” Cassie asks.

“Yeah. We’ve played a little with that, trying to focus the feelings and share them, but… It’s…” she’s blushing a little, “hard to focus, when… he’s hard.”

Savarah’s laughing at that. “Yeah, that’s how Jacen’s walked in on us a few times. He can sneak up on Critt, but he shouldn’t be able to sneak up on me, but I get _distracted._ ”

Rey raises an eyebrow. “He’s sneaking up on you?”

“Not really…” Savarah sighs. “Look… I know… There’s no good solution for it. He likes Critt, too. I get that. Critt’s awesome. He should like Critt. And they share a home, so sometimes we’re there. We try to keep it to times he’s either not home or asleep, but his telepathy is so sharp, that if he wakes up and we’re in the living room… Sometimes he’ll decide to ‘get a drink.’ Remind us that we’re giving him a concert.”

“Does Critt honestly not know?” Magiit asks.

“He really doesn’t. I’m not kidding about bugger all for empathy or telepathy. If you don’t say it to his face, he can’t pick it up.”

“And you and Jacen don’t tell him because…” Rey says.

Savarah’s looking at Rey like she’s insane. “I don’t think there’s anything Jacen could do that would make me that angry at him.”

Rey blinks.

“Rey, he doesn’t want Critt to know.”

“He’s said that, but… You and Jacen get along. You both like and respect each other. He loves Critt. Critt loves him. Critt loves you. You love Critt. This doesn’t sound difficult to figure out. All three of you have a good time together.”

The girls all stare at each other. It’s clear they really wish Rose was here right now. Finally, Magiit says, voice very patient and gentle, “Rey, Critt doesn’t like boys. At all. And Jacen doesn’t like girls. At all. This… isn’t something talking can fix. They’re both narrow, really narrow,” she’s holding out her hands, barely a hair apart, “and not for each other.”

Savarah nods. “All the love in the world isn’t going to make that work. I mean… I like Jacen. He’s pretty. He’s fun to be around. If Critt… wanted to try… I mean, I guess we could, but it’s physically impossible for Critt to have less interest in sex with Jacen than he does. And Jacen looks at me like I’m… well, nothing he wants. He’s completely uninterested in me as anything other than a friend.”

Magiit’s eyeing Rey. “Do you like girls, too?”

Rey nods. “Not… That that matters at this point, but, yes. I’ve seen women I was interested in.”

The girls look at each other. Magiit’s the one who says, “Liking boys and girls, that’s common enough that there’s a name for it, ‘Verse, but it’s maybe a quarter of people, and most of them will prefer one or the other. Most people have no interest, at all, in whichever sex they don’t prefer.”

Savarah tentatively says, “Kylo’s like that, right? No interest in boys?”

“I mean… He’s said that, but…” Rey knows he’s said that, but she just sort of assumed that he’d just never met the right one. Granted that was before he and Jon became close. Though, really thinking about it, now, given how he’s got no interest in Jon, and how good of friends they are… She sighs.

“He probably meant it, literally,” Magiit replies.

“Yeah. So…” Rey’s feeling a little silly. “No telling Critt about Jacen.”

“Yeah, if he ever wants to tell Critt, he gets to do that for himself, and the rest of us sit on it, because…” Savarah says.

Magiit adds, “Because if you’ve got any empathy you can feel how much Jacen doesn’t want to tell. It’d mess things up and make them uncomfortable, and… Sooner or later, something’s going to happen, but not now.”

“Jacen liked Jon,” Cassie adds.

Rey sighs. “Jon is _way_ too old for Jacen.”

“Jon liked him, too,” Magiit adds. “I didn’t feel it, but I could see that look. That was the look of a man who wants to get with the person he’s looking at.”

Rey rubs her forehead. “Waaayyy too old.”

“He’s not ancient,” Savarah adds. “Not like he’s forty.”

Rey groans softly.

“Just saying, both of them were interested, and Jacen’s seventeen, so…” Magiit says. “No one would have blinked if he’d met Jon on Canto and became his pet.”

“Jon doesn’t need a pet,” Rey says. “He’s got fish for that.”

The girls laugh at that. “That’s not what I meant,” Magiit adds.

“I _know._ Just, leave Jon be. He’s got his own stuff going on right now.”

“Poe! Or at least Poe’s got some sort of Jon thing going on,” Savarah says. “I didn’t know who he was thinking about until we met him, but Poe likes Jon.”

“Does Jacen know that?” Magiit asks.

“I mean, I can’t imagine he doesn’t. He’s a better telepath than I am and Poe takes him up in _Micah_ for flying lessons, so he’s got to know, right?” Savarah replies.

Cassie’s just watching this, shaking her head. “This is complicated.”

Rey takes that as a boon. “It always is. But… For the time being, let’s say you guys set the upper limit of older than you are to five years, okay?”

“Why?” Savarah asks.

Magiit adds, “Even on Canto, a man wasn’t really considered decent marriage material until he was forty, and girls were marriageable at 18.”

Rey doesn’t know what to do with that. “Just…”

“Isn’t Kylo like ten years older than you are?” Cassie adds.

“We don’t know how much older than I am he is. Officially, on the records, it’s six years.”

“That’s more than five,” Magiit says.

“I’m not seventeen.” 

“I don’t see why it matters,” Magiit says.

“That’s because you’re sixteen,” Rose says, coming down the stairs. “You’re always old enough when you’re in the middle of it, and when you get to the other side of it, you look back and think: ‘Holy hell, I was a flaming idiot when I was seventeen, eighteen, whatever.’”

Rey sighs, because they can sense she’s not sure about that, and are chipping away at her, but Rose is, so they don’t argue with her.

“What sort of flaming idiot?” Savarah asks.

“Among other things, being sure that you were going to spend the rest of your life with a man who’s… okay… enough, but really, once you’ve had someone who was good for you, you can see wasn’t. But when you’re in the middle of it, okay can look awfully good, especially if you’ve never had good.”

The girls think about that, and Rose continues on, “You’re not going to end your days on this planet with this group of twenty-five people. We’re getting you ready to go out into the wider galaxy, and the love of your life right now will probably be a warm memory later, as you find another love, or loves.”

That gets a deep, quiet, contemplation.

“We’ll leave?” Cassie finally says.

“I hope so,” Rey replies. “I hope you’ll come back, too, but…” she gestures to the settlement. “There’s nothing really here, you know? The idea is to make sure that you’re well-balanced in yourselves, and that you’ve got the skills to go out and do something.”

“We know Jacen’s going back to the Order, eventually,” Savarah says.

“I could do that, too,” Cassie adds.

“Or not, as you see fit,” Rose replies. “You joined the Order because it was your best bet. When you’re ready to leave here, you’ll have options beyond Order or die.”

“I could… go home and get people out?” Cassie says.

“You could go home and get people out. You could go home, open up a school of the Maji of your own, and rescue kids from the Bishops. You could decide to go in with Ostrae and open up a bakery somewhere. Like your Great Uncle, you could find a cause you believe in, and become a spy. You’d likely have some _advantages_ on that. You’re probably going to end up doing something you could have never imagined.” Rey smiles at her. “I certainly am.”

“But back to basics,” Rose says, “you’ll have vastly more in the way of options if you’re not taking care of kid while you do this. So, again, no making babies until you’re absolutely certain you want one, and you’ve got enough of a home and stable life set up so you can take care of one easily.” 

“How do we… not?” Cassie asks. It’s clear she heard what the ladies were saying about not doing it, but it’s also clear that she doesn’t know the particulars.

“Once your cycle is regular, you can get shots from MX-6. You can have your sweetie use a sheath. There’s a device that goes inside of you and prevents pregnancies if you want to try that. MX can take you through the options. There are a lot of them. Apparently, since the Order restocked the medbay, we’ve got _everything,_ so he’s probably got more options than I even know exist,” Rose says.

“There’s a shot for men, too. I… don’t exactly know how it works, just that it does,” Rey adds.

“How does it…" It's clear from the way she says it, she means sex, not contraceptives, "work?” Cassie asks, looking shy, curious, and a little scared.

“A lot of different ways,” Rose says. “That’s for you and your sweetie to figure out together. That’s part of the fun of it. But, between now and your possible future sweetie, get a mirror, go to the refresher or… You have your own room, right?”

Cassie shakes her head. “The twins and I thought it’d be nicer to set bunks around the edge of the room and keep everything open.”

“Okay, take a mirror, go to the refresher, preferably when they’re out, and go really look at yourself. And touch everything. See what makes you feel good. Your datapad’s got anatomy lessons so you can find out what everything you’re looking at is, and then play with them," Rose says.

Rey adds, “If you type human nudes into the library, you’ll get lots of pictures of naked people doing a lot of different things. That should give you a pretty good idea of what everything looks like, and a lot of ways that people fit together.”

“But there are a lot of ways?” Cassie asks.

“Lots,” Rose says with a grin. “It’s like a piston in a cylinder. As long as you line the piston up properly with the cylinder, you can orient the cylinder however you like.”

The girls giggle at that.

Magiit adds, “I think she’s looking for something a little more concrete than that.”

Rey arches an eyebrow. She doesn’t say, ‘she is, or you are,’ but instead says. “Well, you know where your bits are, and his are in about the same place, so…”

“Concrete,” Rose adds. “Okay, lying down, one or the other of you on top. Usually, his legs are between yours, because that makes things easier. Him lying on his back, you kneeling across him, facing his head, or feet, or any other direction you like…”

Rey gets on the same page with Rose on _concrete._ “You on your hands and knees, and him behind you, usually kneeling. Standing up. If he’s strong enough he can pick you up. If he’s not, you can lean against a wall or door or something.”

“Kylo can pick you up?” Rose asks, looking intrigued.

Rey nods with a little smile. “Granted, both of us have some… advantages when it comes to maintaining balance.”

“That man’s practically a tree. I bet Rey could climb him without him so much as wobbling,” Magiit says, with a naughty grin.

Rose holds up her hands. “Him holding you up, no wall or anything to lean against, sounds more like a workout than sex to me, but… Uh… Positions… You on your side, him behind you. You on your side, him in front of you.”

“Sitting down, you in his lap, facing him, facing away, across his lap. Really, anything that gets your maomao in the right place over his shaft will work. Just some of them feel better than others.”

“What feels better?” Savarah asks.

“Depends on how you’re built, and he is,” Rose adds. “Emotionally though, I like Finn on top of me. That’s a good angle, feels nice physically, but I can’t finish like that. That said, if I’ve already come, I like that one, his weight on me, being face to face, we can kiss easily, he can go as fast and hard as he likes.” She looks pleased. “Uh… His arms… When he’s on top his biceps and triceps and lats are flexed and hard, and… I like running my hands over them. All of that strength and power and it’s there, in my bed, in my body, with me, moving to make us both feel good… I like that.”  

Rey’s never said it before, she’s not sure if she’s ever thought it, but… “That’s part of what I like about standing up. I can’t move much if we’re standing up, and what moving I can do, I need to use him as a prop for. And he’s strong enough to hold me up, move me, and support himself with me moving on him. He can…” She rolls her lips… “It’s like our marriage, he’s strong enough to give me what I need.”

The girls look a little confused by that.

“It’s a symbol. I don’t need him to be able to pick me up, at least not routinely, as part of our marriage. I just like that part. He’s strong enough to… support me, emotionally, socially, through this life thing we’re figuring out and moving through.”

“You don’t need someone to take care of you, but you like the fact that someone signed up to do the job,” Rose says.

“Exactly. And sometimes, as Hiffa showed us, sometimes you _need_ someone to take care of you, and it’s good to have people who will.”

Savarah’s looking a little shy, but she says, “You can do it as much as you like?”

“You can do it as much as you like,” Rose says.

“The Presbyters told us that if we did it too much, we’d get loose and floppy and no man would ever take pleasure in us.”

Rose again looks like she’s ready to go kill people, mostly male religious leaders, but then she reins it in and says, “I pushed a three kilo baby out of my vagina, and it went right back to normal. It took a while. I wasn’t hopping on Finn the next day, and everything was _sore_ for a few weeks, but… You heal. You stretch. Your body is designed to get a baby out of it, and no man, no matter how well hung, is going to be anywhere near the size of a kid.”

“Your muscles get stronger and more fit when you use them. Your maomao isn’t some sort of magic body part that defies the rules of all other body parts,” Rey says. “It’s just one that can make you feel better. But, just like your arms and legs, it’s mostly muscle, so the more you work it, and the kinder you are to it, the stronger and more flexible it gets.”

“Does it hurt the first time?” Magiit asks.

“My first time with Kylo didn’t hurt at all.”

“My first time stung a little. We were both over eager and moved too fast, but it didn’t hurt. If it hurts, the first question is do you really want to be doing this? If the answer is anything other than an ultra-emphatic yes, that’s likely part of why it hurts. A pinkie finger isn’t going to go in easy if you don’t want it there,” Rose says.

“And much bigger things will slide on in nice and easy if you do,” Rey adds. The girls look a little shocked, and Rose giggles at that, well aware of what… who’s… _much bigger._

“And if it’s hurting but you really want to? Some of the older girls talked about bleeding all over the place, and crying while forcing it on in,” Magiit says.

Rose and Rey share a look, and then Rose says, “That doesn’t sound like they much wanted to have sex, but… If they did. Or if you do, but it’s not just sliding on in easy, first off, sex doesn’t dry up and go away. It’s not like if you don’t do it right that second, there’ll be no other chance. There’s no expiration date. Mamie and Pops were at it well into their seventies. Trust me, it’ll still be there tomorrow and the day after. Shelve penetration for another day. Put his tongue to good use, and put your mouth or hands to good use, and make each other happy another way. Then go see MX-6. Make sure everything is alright. You might have something going on down there making things uncomfortable. Get that taken care of.

“Or, you might have a hymen. Some women have a little extra skin around the outside of their pussy, and that can be tight, and stretching it out can be uncomfortable, which is why my first time stung a little, and if the guy’s too eager he can rip it, but… Not every girl has one, and if you’ve got a guy who’s patient, and willing to use tongue and fingers, you don’t have to end up in pain or bleeding.

“And you might need extra slick. Get him good and wet with spit, get some lube from the Medbay, make sure he’s making you feel really good so your body makes enough to let him slip in. Sex without enough lube hurts, and with enough is a joy, and sometimes bodies just don’t make enough to do the job, so if you need extra, go get some.”

The girls look at Rey to see if she’s got anything else to add, and she thinks for a moment, and then says, “Get on top of him. He might not exactly know what he’s aiming for, and you do, so get on top and make sure he’s in the right place. That can help, too.”

“What do you do with your mouth?” Savarah asks.

“Whatever you like,” Rose says.

“No, you said use your mouth instead of penetration… What did you mean?”

“I meant, have him get down on his knees, and kiss, lick, and suck that pretty pussy until you get off.”

Magiit looks like she’s got plans for this evening all of a sudden, and Savarah and Cassie are intrigued and scandalized.

“And you can do it back to him, too,” Rey says. “Really, if you’re worried about possibly making a baby, and not wanting one, that’s a good thing to do. There’s no way he can get you pregnant if it’s in your mouth. And no man in the history of human men ever got a woman pregnant with his fingers and tongue.”

“And, as of this point, I have not met a single man, anywhere, who doesn’t like it.” Rose pauses. “Okay, that’s not true. I have not met a single man, anywhere, who likes women, who doesn’t like muff diving.”

“Muff diving?” Rey asks.

“Uh, yeah.”

“What’s a muff?”

“Do you really not know?”

“I… A long while ago, Kylo and I were talking about names for our bits, and he came up with that one, and he didn’t know what that was a non-slang word for. Wasn’t sure if it was just a term for...” she remembers what Rose called it, “pussy.”

“A muff is a hand warmer. It’s like, a tube of fabric, usually fur-lined, that you stick your hands in to keep them warm when it’s cold out.”

Rey sniggers. “He’ll like that.”

“You were really talking about body part slang?” Magiit asks.

Rey's got a soft smile remembering that. “We were still really new. Might have been the second or third time we were together, and we were playing, and obviously we both speak Galactic Standard, but have completely different slang, because we’re from not even remotely the same part of the galaxy, so… part of playing was naming everything. It was fun.”

Rose is smiling at Rey. “That’s sweet.” Then she looks to the girls. “That’s what I mean by figuring it out, together. You take the time, and make a space to learn each other, together.”

Rey adds, “Learn each other’s parts, and what those parts like. Mostly, just… Take the time to stroke and pet and kiss and lick everything. Make sure he does it for you, too. Explore. Keep talking and feeling with each other.”

“Everything?” Magiit asks.

“Well, if it doesn’t smell good, you might want to wait until after a shower. Or maybe do it in the shower, while soaping each other up. But… Yeah. That’s how you figure out what you and he like. Kylo and I often play after or during a shower or bath, because, well… humans can get pretty stinky, you know?”

The girls laugh at that. They _know._   

“Seriously, _everything_?” Magiit’s thinking hard about _everything._ The three Force sensitives know what she’s asking, and Rose has it from context.

“I’d make sure it’s clean first, but _yes._ Everything. It’s a lot of fun, feels really good, and if you ever want to see a man squirm and beg and plead and feel so good he’s on the verge of levitating off the bed, definitely try licking _everything._ Especially, if you’ve got your hand on his shaft at the same time.”

Rose looks intrigued by that. “You’ve really?”

Rey nods.

“And he liked it?” Now Rose is the one looking curious and mildly scandalized.

“A LOT.”

“Hmm…” She also appears to be developing plans for tonight. “Did you like it?”

“I can feel it through him, so I got the kick of him having a _very_ good time, and me giving it to him.”

“After a shower?” Rose asks.

“Sonic, faster and more thorough.” She thinks about the practicalities of that. "Uh... I don't generally get sick, so...  _Really_ clean. But, if he likes your tongue on him, he'll probably like you washing him up, too." Another moment of thought, and how little fun Hiffa was. "And... I didn't stick my tongue in it, just on... Fingers is where in came into play, and that was kind of messy, but... that's just being human. And there was a very thorough washing up after."

The girls are just watching this.

Rose looks back to them. “It’s just… fun. Playtime with your favorite person. It’s serious, because there can be serious consequences, but if you take care of that ahead of time, it’s a way to make yourself and each other feel good.”

“Does it have to be your favorite person?” Savarah asks.

Rose shakes her head. “No. I think it’s more fun if you really like the person, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s been a long time since Poe’s had a favorite person, and not that long since he got shagged, so… It can just be something to feel good.

“But, I think it’s easier with someone you really like. Any person you run into can likely get you some mediocre sex. Okay sex is pretty easy to get, too. If you’re willing to touch yourself during, you can just about always guarantee at least okay sex. Good sex usually takes some more effort. Great sex takes time, patience, and a good read on the person you’re with. It’s not impossible to do that with a stranger, but it’s a lot easier to do it with someone you love and trust.”

“You can touch yourself during sex?” Savarah asks.

“Oh yeah. I’d suggest doing it at least a few times so your partner can see what you like and where you touch. And more than that as necessary. Sometimes he’s further along than you are, so it’s easier to speed yourself up with your own hand. Sometimes he doesn’t have a hand readily available, or the position doesn’t work well for it. Sometimes, it’s been a long, hard day and you’re feeling kind of prickly, and just want to get off, so you do yourself while doing him to make sure you get off easy. There are a lot of reasons to touch yourself, but certainly do it.”

“Kylo likes watching me do it.”

Rose nods at that, a _very_ knowing look on her face. “That, too. Most men really like to watch women do anything involving sex. Also, if it’s an option, keep the lights on. You’re going to have a much easier time learning each other if you can _see_ what you’re doing. And, I’m less visually oriented than Finn, I know watching sex doesn’t hit me as hard as it hits him, but it still hits me.”

“We have a mirror near our bed, so we can see everything easier. Watching is fun,” Rey adds.

“You don’t feel weird watching yourself,” Cassie asks.

“If I couldn’t feel how good of a time he’s having watching, I might, but I can see how he watches me, so that means I generally feel pretty good about how I look, too,” Rey says. 

“You like women, too,” Magiit adds.

“I’m not sure if that matters when it comes to watching myself,” Rey says.

“Probably doesn’t hurt,” Magiit says.

Rey shrugs at that. “Maybe? No idea.” She looks at the girls, and at Rose… “Did we, get everything?”

Rose looks back to the girls. “Questions, comments, thoughts?”

They don’t appear to have any.

“Okay, we’re always here, and so are the guys, too. Poe’ll definitely tell you anything you want to know, and Kylo might blush, but he probably will, too,” Rey looks to Rose.

“I might have to kick him under the table, but Finn’ll answer questions, too.”

The girls nod at that, and then begin to bundle up.

When they’re gone, Rey says to Rose, “Your man… the convenient one, if you want, if you give me his name, I can find out if he’s dead.”

Rose shakes her head. “He’s dead. Paige’s husband is dead, too. Mamie didn’t just tell us to make friends. She gave us the herbs to get rid of an inconvenient husband when the time was right. We got to Purell, where he wanted me to live, with his wife, who was also less-than-thrilled by the situation. His lady couldn’t have children, and he wanted babies. I had the shot to take care of that, but he didn’t know that.

“That’s how I got him to take me… I told him I was pregnant, and he decided to take me when he left.

“I was there for six weeks. His wife and I teamed up, saving every credit we could, and one night we served him a supper he didn’t get up from, both of us bought tickets on the next freighter out, and parted company after.”

Rey lets out a long breath. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. Wherever she ended up, I hope it’s better than where she was.”

Rey nods at that.

Rose smiles a bit, but it’s kind of sad. “I suppose I have to tell Finn that, before one of them runs their mouth and he finds out about it the wrong way.”

Rey shakes her head. “You tell him that when you want to. When you’re ready. I would have rather been able to _tell_ Kylo, rather than just have him feel it off of me. I think I would have done it eventually, but… You tell him when you need him to know, and when you think he can take it.”

Rose closes her eyes and nods. “Thanks.” She’s quiet for another moment, and then says, “The whole planet.”

Rey nods. “I guess, when he told me that, I should have… what… killed him? Got up and left? Hated him forever?”

Rose shrugs. “Before I met Finn, I would have told you that anyone in a First Order uniform was a just kill. And I knew they stole babies. And I knew some of the people in those uniforms are younger than the girls we chatted with tonight. And I didn’t care. It was better to die, or be killed, than to work with them. But, I met Finn, and… There were millions of people in First Order uniforms, and… I know how he got out… I read the PsyOps reports on him. He’s got off the charts willpower. Anyone who was less strong, less stubborn, couldn’t have done it. And just about everyone else has less willpower.

“I cheered when we blew up StarKiller. I screamed with joy when I got the first report on the _Fulminatrix_. It… took about twenty minutes before I knew what that victory cost. But, any of those millions of people could have been another Finn, just… not quite as hard-headed.”

Rey nods at that, smiles a little. 

“They hurt me, and what I held dear, so I didn’t care how many of them died, as long as they did. So… I don’t condone blowing up Jakku. I don’t think it was right. But I can’t hate him for it.”

Rey nods at that, too. “Yeah. There was a part of me that liked it. A small savage part that cried out in triumph. I never got to do it, but he did, and… That was good. But it was wrong.”

“Yeah, well, just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s a good plan.”

Rey sighs. “Yeah.” They’re quiet. “You know, I’d been thinking this conversation was going to be a lot more perky.”

“That’s how I remember them being as a kid, too. But… We didn’t lead perky lives, and we didn’t rescue kids who had perky lives, so… I think we’re helping them get to somewhere better than where they left. That’s got to be good for something, right?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“You want to fetch my man home?”

“Sure. Apparently, if it gets cold enough, people get over their aversion to teleporting, fast.” Rey makes herself smile at that.

“The fact that it didn’t kill Poe helped a lot, too.” Rose says with a little smile.

Rey takes a minute to get a feel for where Finn is, with Poe in his ship, and then waves goodbye to Rose, off to get her man, and then wrap up the night with hers.

 

 

* * *

Kylo’s on their chair, datapad in hand, looking over what is, hopefully, the final, final, final draft of the contract that will begin the eventual emancipation of Polonia.

Hopefully.

It’s been through his lawyers, and him, and back to them, five times, and then it went to their lawyers, and their leaders, through Force alone knows how many drafts, and then it came back to his legal team, and they messed with it more, and back to theirs, and back to his again, and now it’s back in his hands, and maybe, assuming he can read more than two paragraphs at a time without falling asleep (which is in question, he’s already dozed off twice) they can finally get this things done, and start getting mining operations into play.

He feels Rey a heartbeat before seeing her, and tenses, there’s this clinging sadness to her.

Then he sees her. And she does look down. He puts the pad on the table next to their chair, and holds open his arms. “Cuddle?”

She nods. “Yeah.” And then curls into his body.

He strokes her back, and nuzzles against her face. “Wanna talk?”

“Not yet.”

“Want me to talk?”

“Please.” She nods to the table. “What’s that?”

So, he tells her, and gets into it, and how eventually they’ll get this thing signed and that might involve another outing of The Master and Mistress, and she groans a bit at that, though he can feel she’s perking up a bit. He’s distracting her. So, he bends the idea a bit, “Maybe, this one, it’ll be a close gathering. Get their top… I don’t know, ten people. You, me, Jon, Schiff, probably, since this is going to feed his shipbuilding needs, whichever one of my people’ll end up provisional governing, and just have a nice, quite dinner.”

She thinks about that. “I’d like that better.”

“Me, too.”

“Or maybe they’ll want to do something there, and we can finally be guests at these things, and just have a good time and play,” and he makes clear what sort of playing he’s thinking about, and that gets a little smile, and a lot more sad.

He doesn’t roll his eyes, but she catches his annoyance. Anything that makes her feel sad about sex is something he wants to smack. With a lightsaber. Hard. A lot.

That does get an eye roll from her. “Kylo.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“I know. I can feel you _not saying anything._ ”

He inclines his head, kisses her forehead, and says, “I’m allowed to get annoyed about things that make you sad.”

“You’re allowed to get annoyed about whatever you like.”

“Thank you.” He strokes her hair. “Talk to me? So, I’m not just sitting here stewing, wishing I could fix it?”

“You can’t fix it.”

“Not if I don’t know what the problem is.”

“I promise you can’t fix this.”

He grins at her, or bares his teeth. “Try me.”

Rey rolls her eyes, but that does get her talking. “That the galaxy is full of fucking evil shits. That my girls had maniacs spew filth into their ears about something that should have been beautiful. That Rose was on Hays Minor when the First Order came to town and had to fuck her way off of it.” Kylo winces at that. “That the first time someone touched me it wasn’t with love. That kids like you and Critt got raised with the idea that their bodies, their basic, human _needs_ were something to be treated as a problem at best and disgusting at worst. That the past was raw and ugly, and it hurt people I love, and I can’t fix it, and the best I can do is try and mend the future, but that doesn’t make the scars go away, and…” And she’s sad, and angry, and frustrated, and it’s bubbling out of her, more in feelings than words because she can’t fix it, and she can’t make it better, and the future isn’t promised, and all she has is the hope that this Maji thing means that more kids get better futures than did in the past, but she’s basically on her own here, and there’s only so many kids she can get to, and sometimes the problems are just too fucking big and…

And he holds on, and listens, and doesn’t try to solve it, not right now, because that’s not what now needs. 

Now just needs to yell at the universe, because sometimes that’s all you can do.

He strokes her hair, and lets her yell, because right now that’s what she needs, and he’s strong enough to take her anger, and to give her ears to listen to it.

And tomorrow, they can talk about doing better by the rest of the world out there, and trying to spread a better message, and the logistics of thousands of trillions of people, and the fact that they not only can’t save them all, they can’t save most of them, and if they’re really lucky, and everything goes right, they might get something in the range of a decently-sized rounding error.

But maybe they can save some.

And that’s got to be enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmmm... when I was mentally envisioning this chapter, it was a lot funnier and perkier than it ended up being. I think a lot of you who mentioned that this chapter would be a lot of fun were thinking the same sort of way. I tried writing just the fun version, but... It didn't gel. 
> 
> I guess this is one of the hallmarks of a Keryl Raist story, even the funny bits'll make you cry. Or maybe you get to find the laughs between the tears. 
> 
> Next week, we've got the boys, and, yeah, that'll be *fun* in a laugh out loud and rip your heart out sort of way, too.


	32. The Talk: The Boys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ups and downs in this one, but I still had a lot of fun with it, and hope you do, too!

2/15/2

 

 

Sitting at Rey’s kitchen table, watching Ren and Finn do everything in their power to get out of this job, Poe smirks.

Poe’s never said it out loud, mostly because he knows neither of them wants to hear it, but he’d certainly really appreciate it if Finn and Ren would at least attempt to get along with each other.

And he’s never said it, because if he were, Finn would go into a long and angry rant about the First Order in general and the huge fucking scar on his back from Ren in particular, and Ren would mostly just sit there quietly, eye twitching a little, and then get defensive about how Finn’s not going to forgive him anytime soon. Or ever. So, there’s no point in him making nice.

So, part of him is looking at this as a chance for both of them to see the other one in a more positive light, and maybe thaw things out a bit, because if there’s one thing that’ll get guys to crack a bit, it’s telling entertaining lies about sex over a few drinks. (Granted, he's not entirely sure that Ren  _can_ tell entertaining lies about sex, but he certainly can listen to them, so that should begin to ease things in the right direction.)

And part of him, the part that is watching, for the first time ever, Finn and Ren both stare at him in agreement about something, namely that neither of them is remotely capable of handling this particular job, and that Poe should really do it, on his own, is aware of the fact that it took the girls telling them that they needed to sit down with the older boys and have a chat about sex and whatnot to get both Finn and Ren to stop staring at each other like a fight’s about to break out and start thinking about something else.

Granted, they appear to be thinking that Poe, charming, polished, gets tuffed regularly by lots of _different_ people, Poe, is the best of the three of them to do this, and that really, neither of them have anything of any real value to add to the conversation, and… Finn’s actually talking about how much Chewie needs him, and they’ve got to have that conversation while he’s away, and… Ren’s doing that thing where he’s trying to chew a hole through his lip, and now Finn’s pointing out he’s only had sex with Rose, and Ren’s attempting to top that by mentioning being raised in a sect of celibate monks, and…

Poe shakes his head and decides to say it, because after all, this isn’t going to be a conversation with just Jacen. “I know I'm not subtle about this, so how has it escaped both of you that I _don’t fuck women?_ That I’ve _never_ fucked a woman? That I haven’t even seen one naked in real life?”

Which would be the moment that both of them stare at him, dumbfounded, and then at each other, and back to Poe, and are suddenly coming to the conclusion that while neither of them feel like they’ve got anything approaching Poe’s level of experience with sex, that _just possibly,_ in that they’ve both, on a regular basis, seen a woman naked and touched one, they might have something of use for both Critt and Elias that Poe just _doesn’t_.

Poe smirks. “Exactly. Yeah, I can have a chat with Jacen, and likely fill him in better than you two can, but… So. My ship. Tomorrow night. Bring the sprogs. We’ll talk.”

 

 

* * *

2/16/2

 

Traditionally, conversations like this are had with alcohol.

At least, that’s how Poe and his dad did it. Granted, on his part there wasn’t a _lot._ He had one, small, cider, and then sweetfizz, but it made him feel grown up, and likely got him more comfortable with asking questions than he would have been otherwise.

(And the whiskey his dad was sipping likely made answering them easier, too. Especially since Poe’s line of questions wasn’t a shock to his dad, but on a mechanical level, wasn’t something he had any real experience with, either.)

So, Poe’s ready for this. He’s got cider, because, especially for kids, it’s a good place to start. It tastes good, it’s easy to drink, they could probably drain his entire stock of it and just wake up woozy and headachy in the morning, (though he’s not going to let that happen), and with any luck it’ll dull down their inhibitions enough to get them actually talking, which should make this easier.

So, for the kids, Poe’s not expecting any issues.

No, it’s Master Dark and The Smuggler who are going to be the issue.

Ren doesn’t like alcohol, and Finn won’t drink if Ren’s around.

And normally, he’d respect that, but if he can’t get those two to unclench a bit and relax some around each other, then this is going to fall flat. Ren’s already told him Jon’ll lube his brain if he needs it, and Poe’s fairly sure this counts as _needs it._ And Finn… he’s got to relax around Ren, or the kids’ll focus on them, and not what they’re talking about it.

He makes coffee. It’ll cover the taste of the rum he’s putting in there, and he’ll dole it out slowly enough they won’t get more than buzzed.

It feels like a good plan at the time.

 

 

* * *

Ren and Critt get there first. They’d apparently been working on whatever it is they do to not be so pissed off all of the time. Poe’s never exactly asked, but whatever it is, they don’t appear to be any rougher for the wear. And he’s certainly noticed, especially since he’s been working with Ren, that Critt’s a bit less… everything… these days. Granted, he started working with Ren when his parents left, and that might have something to do with it, too.

Critt’s looking around, noticing that Poe’s changed things a bit since the last time he was in here. “You got a galley?”

Poe half-shrugs. “I’m moving more people than cargo these days, so room to actually feed you guys comes in handy.”

(Really though, since he started cooking in the communal kitchen, he’s decided he likes it, so… He’s got a full galley now.)

Ren glances at the coffee mugs, seeing three of them. “For us?”

“Yes.” He hands one over to Ren.

He takes it, and a deep sip, and then slowly lowers the cup and _looks_ at Poe. He shakes his head and takes another drink. It’s abundantly clear that he knows _exactly_ what Poe did.

Poe half-shrugs and takes a long sip of his own drink. “Male bonding rituals work better with alcohol.”

Ren rolls his eyes and takes one more sip. “How much is in here?”

“Two shots.”

Ren nods, and puts his mug down before pulling off his cloak, hanging it up, and sitting at the table. Critt watches that, and then says, “So, does that mean we get to drink, too?”

“Check the cooler.”

He does and comes back with a bottle, grinning, then slides in next to Ren.

Poe nods. “Take it slow. You puke in my ship; you’re cleaning it up. And I’m sleeping in your bunk until the smell’s out.”

Critt waves that away. “Back on Frerreau, we used to get cider. I’ve been allowed to drink it since I was twelve.”

“Okay. Good.”

A moment later, Finn’s stomping up the ramp with Jacen and Elias, all three of them dusted with snow. Either they came from further away than Kylo and Critt did, or they were working outside.

“Poe, Critt…” Finn nods at them, ignores Ren, sees the cups, and says, “Tell me it’s coffee, and tell me it’s hot.”

“It is and it is,” Poe replies, and Finn swoops in, grabbing it, holding it in his gloved hands and letting the steam wash over his face.

“Outside?” Critt asks.

Jacen slides into the booth next to him, not taking his coat or gloves off, he still needs to thaw a bit before that, and nods. “Feel like passing some of that my way, too? It’s fu--frosty out there.”

Poe sets up his coffeemaker for more of it. “Those cups are spoken for. I’ll make more. Or you and Elias can have cider if you like.”

Elias opts for cider, and Jacen looks at Poe, thinks to him _I’ll take mine with milk, sugar, and a shot of rum, please_ and Poe sighs. At least it was a request and not an order, and it was silent, in his head, because he could tell it was supposed to be a secret.

They take a moment, the boys talking about being cold and how the Faviers are getting stir crazy in the barn all the time, and how they really need to get a dome over them or something so the critters can run around, while Poe gets the last of the drinks set. But, eventually, they’re all seated around his table, (Ren and Finn on opposite sides, and Finn looks ready to sprint away or fight if need be) drinks in hand (he hopes that look will get less pronounced as Finn actually drinks the ‘coffee’ instead of just using it as  a hand warmer.) and ready to go.

 

 

“Okay. One rule for tonight. No lies. We’ll talk. You can ask whatever questions you like. We’ll answer or not, but no lies,” Poe says. (Neither Ren nor Finn appears to be under the impression they signed up for this, but, again, when he was doing it with his dad, that line mattered to Poe.) “I’m not saying any of us’ll know the answer, but hopefully between the three of us, at least one of us has a clue.”

Finn sniggers at that and then shakes his head. “You can hope. But unless you’ve got questions about Rose, and I’m _not_ answering those, I don’t think I’ll be of much use.”

“They’re women, Finn. They’re all fairly similarly built to each other,” Poe says, and then looks to Ren, “Right?”

He nods. “All the ones I’ve seen.”

Finn rolls his eyes and takes a drink, and then chokes. “What is in this?”

So much for the secret. “Coffee and rum, drink up,” Poe answers. He sees Finn glare at him, and then look at Ren’s cup, note that he’s a quarter of the way through his drink, and takes another sip.

He swallows, and then says, “Before you tried to poison me, I had a point. Yes, I know they’re all built, more or less, the same. I’ve only slept with one of them, but I’ve seen holovids. Back in the day, _a lot_ of holovids. That said, they don’t all like the same things, and just because you’re good with one of them does not mean you’re going to be good with a different one.”

Ren nods at that, too.

“That’s not the level of useful I’m thinking,” Poe adds. “You learn how to fuck by paying attention to the person you’re fucking. None of us will be any good, beyond the most general level of here’s where all the bits are, and maybe try touching them with your tongue or something, at teaching you how to fuck because you’ve got to be paying attention and talking…” he looks at Ren… “or thinking at your partner, to get good at sex. This is more general stuff… So… let’s start here, who’s a virgin?”

Jacen smirks, looking stupidly proud of himself, stretches a bit, and says nothing. Critt and Elias look at him, look at each other, and both with horrible sabbac faces, also, say nothing.

Poe looks to Ren for confirmation on the lying. He nods and slaps Critt upside the back of the head as Poe gets Elias.

 

 

“First rule of the night is…” Finn says.

 

 

Critt glares and says, “Fine. Me.”

Elias looks horrified and astonished, and Ren’s the one who gets the disconnect, because he’s the one who can see what Elias is thinking about. “That’s not what any of us mean by sex.” Then Ren looks at the other two men. “How are we defining sex?”

Finn stares back at him, astonished. “You have to ask? Yeah, you mentioned the raised-by-celibate-Jedis-bit, but… You know this, right?” Ren, Jacen, and Elias can all feel Finn suddenly wondering what the hell it is that Ren and Rey actually get up to when they’re on their own.

Ren’s practically got a view of his brain he’s rolling his eyes so hard. “I know how I define sex, now. And I know how we used to define sex back when I was one of the celibate monks, and that definition was so narrow individual atoms would have a hard time passing through. By the definition I grew up with, Poe’s a virgin.”

Poe flat out laughs at that. “Not for a _long_ time.”

Ren smirks at that, too. Then he looks to Elias. “But he’s thinking of grinding and kissing, mostly dressed, and I’m fairly sure that’s not sex.”

Elias is blushing so hard he looks ready to burst a blood vessel. Poe gives him an affectionate hair ruffle, nudges his cider closer to him, and says, “We all started there. But, that’s not sex. Uh… Let’s say anything that involves skin to skin touch and you get off.”

Ren blinks. “Get off?”

Finn and Poe are staring at him, as well as Jacen, all three dumbfounded that he’s never heard that term before, but Critt and Elias also don’t know that bit of slang.

Poe runs his fingers through his hair. This is a significantly deeper hole then he was expecting. “Uh… You know… When you…” he makes a little sort of spurting hand gesture.

“Spurt. That’s what we called it,” Ren adds.

“Come,” Critt says.

“Spend,” Elias adds.

“Great,” Poe says. “Anything that involves skin to skin touch and _ejaculation_ , that’s the technical term, right? That’s sex. And no, grinding and kissing, even if you do end up with wet trousers, isn’t sex. It’s practice. And practice is fun, but” Poe nudges Finn to gets up and grab the packs he got for each of the boys. Finn tosses the slicks at them, and the three boys manage to catch them. “When you get around to real sex, use them. _Every_ time until you’re ready to be a dad.”

Jacen smirks and says, “So, I can ignore this bit.”

Kylo feels it off of Poe, so he reaches behind Critt and gives Jacen a little smack upside the back of his head.

Poe says, “Only if you want to finally do some tuffing, pull your shaft out, find it covered in shit, realize the closest refresher is five hundred meters away at the end of the hangar, finally get cleaned up an hour later, and then pee liquid fire a hundred times a day until you get a shot of antis from the med droid three days later.”

Jacen’s face goes white and he swallows, hard.

“Yeah, that’s exactly as much fun as you think it is. And telling your fifty-year-old, _female_ boss about why you can’t work, and having her smirk at you for the next week is an entirely different level of fun.” Kylo’s sniggering at that because he knows said boss was his Mom, and he can _see_ that smirk. “So, unless you want to have the least comfortable conversation with Rey, _ever,_ learn from my mistakes on that one, okay? Use them.” He notices the Finn only grabbed the rubbers. "The little bottles, too." So Finn grabs them, and puts them on the table in front of the kids, too. “And if you don’t have any of that on hand, stick to oral or hand jobs, okay? And trust me, if you think the why to use rubbers reason is gross, you really don’t want to hear about what happens without slick.” Then Poe looks at Finn and Kylo who are just staring at the little bottles. And, watching them look at the bottles, and the fact that Finn didn't automatically  _know_ they were part of the kit, he’s got the sense that _this_ isn’t part of how they do sex. “You use this with the girls, right?”

And for a moment Finn and Kylo are staring at each other now, too. Finally, Finn says, “Uh… If…” He rubs his hand over his face. “We were going to do what you’re talking about, yeah, but…” He’s staring at Kylo, not exactly wanting to get too deep into this, but… He decides the rum in the coffee is likely a good idea and takes a big swallow.

Kylo sort of nods, slowly, and says, “Uh… Generally speaking… At least in my experience… Which is not exactly vast, but…” He rolls his lips together. “And… Uh… I’ve never done what Poe’s talking about, so… At least not on the penetrating side, so I don’t know about that… But, with what I’ve done, if you… need that, with a woman…” He’s taken another gulp of his drink, too, also acutely aware that some things are just easier to say when that little uncomfortable voice in your head is dead, and alcohol is the fastest way to kill it.

“Okay, could you be a little less vague about this, I’d appreciate it. I lost the topic at least a few sentences ago,” Elias says. “I’m not entirely sure what Poe was talking about to begin with, and you two aren’t helping, so…”

 

 

“Right.” Poe says, “As you’ve likely noticed, men don’t come equipped with a delta, so, when we tuff each other, it’s usually, hand, mouth, or ass. And only one of those options is naturally slick, so… Hand or ass, you want some slick. Spit’ll do for a hand, but it’s not going to get the job done if you’re going for ass.”

Elias blinks at that. “You… can… oh… I though… before… you meant… you know… between…”

Poe shakes his head. “Uh… No. I mean, yes, between is an option, and it’s a lot of fun, and if you get the angle right, it’s really good, but… if you’re coming away dirty after that, your partner _really_ needs to work on his hygiene. Also, that’s better with slick, too. Honestly, most of it’s better with slick, or spit, or something to make the strokes flow. But, I’m talking about _in._ ”  

Finn quietly says, “You can do that with a woman, too, and… uh… It’s… good, but, yeah, you want lube for that. A lot of lube.”

“And go slow. That’s true for all of this, but especially anything involving anyone’s ass, including your own, go _slow,_ ” Poe says. “Better yet, get whoever’s doing the penetrating on their back, and the one getting penetrated just eases on down. Trust me, until you’ve got some experience, that’ll work a _lot_ better.”

Jacen looks like he’s wishing he’d brought a pad so he can take notes, and Critt and Elias are both looking slightly squirmy at this.

“Anyway… deltas make their own lube, and if the woman actually wants to be having sex with you, you don’t need extra,” Finn says. “Unless she had a baby like three months earlier, because her body will be off for a bit after that, but… Assuming none of you are planning to be dads anytime soon, this is information you won’t use, so…”

Kylo doesn’t exactly grit his teeth, but… “If she needs that… Either she’s with you because it’s her job, or you’re doing a shit job of making her feel good. If it’s her job, just roll with it, everyone’s going to have a better time because of it, and if it’s not, stop, ask, listen, and pay attention. If she wants sex with you… You should be able to slip in nice and easy.”

“What if you’re big?” Critt says.

 

 

Kylo stands up. He’s a good twenty centimeters taller than Critt, and likely has thirty kilos on him. Just by standing there, he’s getting across the idea of _big_ fairly elegantly. Then he sits down. “Go slow, go gentle, if it’s not working with you on top, which it might not the first few times, because you’ve got a _nebulous_ concept of what you’re aiming for, do like Poe said, roll on your back, have her straddle you, because trust me, she’s going to have a vastly easier time getting you where you need to go than you are, because she _knows_ where you’ve got to go in a way you just _don’t._ Let her set the speed and angle, and you’ll _fit._ If she wants you, it’ll work. If her body doesn’t want yours, go home, jerk it, and go looking for someone else. Don’t try to force it.”

“Didn’t hit the target the first time?” Finn smirks.

Ren rolls his eyes. “Like you did.”

“I was on my back. So, yep, nice and sweet and easy,” Finn looks remarkably pleased by that.

Ren glares at him, a little, no real heat in his eyes. “Between the lube and the slick and being _big_ , and not knowing what I was doing, I slipped out of place a few times. Third time I didn’t hit the target she got me on my back, took over, and it _worked._ ” Kylo takes another drink of his coffee, getting down to half the cup. Without looking up from his cup he says, “Also, if you’re on your back, the view’s really nice.”

Finn takes another drink, and then nods. Kylo can feel him remembering his first time with Rose, and how much he _adored_ it. He’s beaming with the pleasure of the memory. “It is.”

“What do you mean, ‘It’s her job?’” Elias asks. It’s very clear, not just to Kylo, who can feel it, but to Poe and Finn, that the idea that this might be a job is something that’s never occurred to Elias, and that’s distracting him away from concerns like potential views.

It’s also very clear that Finn and Poe are staring at Kylo with _You’re the one who brought it up, you get to take it to its conclusion_ so he’s the one who gets to answer.

He takes another sip of his coffee, feeling the heat of the drink and the alcohol, and possibly the topic of conversation, light his cheeks pink. “People like sex. A lot. Not everyone can get it based on just looks or personality. Not everyone wants to take the time and effort to get it by using looks and personality. And some people just prefer to fuck with no strings attached. So, there are people who sell sex.”

“You can buy sex?” Critt’s looking both amazed and like he can’t believe no one has taken them on a shopping trip yet.

“You can buy anything, somewhere, if you’ve got enough credits,” Poe says. “And just an aside, you three _don’t._ ”

“Here’s the catch,” Finn adds. “Go to the right place, and the people working there are there because they like selling sex. Go to the wrong place, and the people are there because someone’s holding a blaster to their head.” He’s staring at Kylo as he says that. He knows how the First Order got its manpower.

Kylo knows what he’s thinking. “Yes, the Order still has pleasure specialists. And just like with my soldiers, they’re there voluntarily now. We don’t conscript anyone, for anything, anymore.”

“You just let them leave?” Finn can’t believe that.

“For a while there, I had more people, on all levels, in all jobs, leaving than were coming in every month. Yes, we let them leave. I’m trying to make it worth their while to stay, but we’re not keeping anyone who doesn’t want to be there.” He rolls his eyes a bit. “Everyone’s got a monthly wage, room and board, and it’s my understanding the pleasure specialists get paid in tips, as well.”

“Your understanding?” Poe says.

Kylo sounds a bit exasperated at having to be this specific about it. “I haven’t seen a pleasure specialist since before I was in charge. I read reports, and that’s as far as it goes these days.”

 

 

“But that’s not how it used to be?” Jacen asks.

That gets a small wave of exasperation off of Kylo, too, but… This is probably something that’s useful for them to know, so… “The Jedi felt differently about this, and not just about sex. They were pretty sure nothing was a _need._ But as far as I’m concerned, sex is a need, like food or air. If you don’t get enough of it, it won’t kill you, but you’ll start to get—“ he’s gesturing trying to explain it.

“Wrong,” Poe adds.

“Yeah,” Kylo replies. “Back when I was under Snoke, he particularly liked and encouraged that kind of wrong, so I did it as little as I could, but even I had a breaking point, a point where I didn’t like how tangled my head was getting, and that was about once every ten months to a year. And… apparently my personality wasn’t particularly attractive to the women around me,” Finn’s enjoying that line vastly too much, “and all you could see of me was black fabric or metal, so my looks didn’t come into play, so I’d hit my breaking point and then visit the pleasure specialists.”

Finn and the boys are just looking at Poe and Kylo. They’re interested in _wrong._ Then the boys are looking at Finn.

“Uh…” Finn says. “Not for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I miss it if I go too long, but… I just get irritable.”

Kylo half rolls his eyes. Then he points to Finn. “Well balanced, and maybe, some days, on some things, just barely edging into dark.” Then he points to himself. “Back in those days, two shades away from black. Amazingly enough, _every_ emotional situation is easier to deal with if you lean more to the light. Back in those days, irritable was me on a good day. _After_ getting my brains sucked out through my shaft.” Then he says, for Critt mostly, but he figures the other two might need to know this, “You asked about what I like to do, and how I stay more balanced, and yes, sex is part of that. Sex with Rey helps, a lot. It’s easier to not… feel like everything’s going wrong, or is going to go wrong, or angry all the time, or just… bad, when you know there’s something good, physically and mentally, coming in the next day or so.”

“Yeah, shocking revelation, being happy makes life easier,” Finn says, voice sharp, sarcastic.

“Fuck you, Finn!” Finn’s moving back, fast, into defensive mode, and Poe grabs his wrist, he can feel Ren’s not in fight mode, he’s just talking. Talking _hot,_ but talking. “You’ve got no use for me, fine. But try a little empathy and pretend you can imagine that there are people for whom _happy_ isn’t the default setting. For some of us, happy takes work. Let me guess, you wake up, and as long as everything is more or less okay, you can go roaming about with a smile on your face and joy in your heart. That’s not how it works for me, and it’s not how it works for Critt, and it’s not how it works for a lot of darksiders. Happy takes work, and effort, and intentionally setting things up to encourage _not_ always being stuck in hurt.” Then he looks back to the boys. “And yes, with the way I do it, sex is part of that. Being with people who like me is part of it. Physically enjoying things, being _allowed_ to physically enjoy things, that’s all part of it.

“Being raised a Jedi means you aren’t allowed to _want_ things. You aren’t allowed to enjoy anything that isn’t being a Jedi. No physical pleasures, not food, not touch, not… clothing that feels good on your skin, because Force forbid you ever get attached to something other than being a Jedi, and try to seek it out. So, food, sex, touch, cuddling, comfortable clothing and furniture, we wore homespun and slept on mats on the fucking floor. Jon’s suggesting at some point I may develop taste in music, because apparently music is a thing people like. Anything like that, things that make you feel good, pleasurable things, _help._ So, fucking helps. It feels good and keeps my mind less tangled. Sex with Rey is better. Speaking of things Jedi aren’t allowed to have, romantic love is at the top of the list, and that makes _everything_ better. And unlike the other women I’ve had sex with, Rey loves me, and that matters. And back when I was under Snoke, literally no one, including myself, loved me, I wasn’t getting tuffed regularly, I barely ate, didn’t sleep, enjoyed nothing other than occasionally beating the smirk off of Hux’s face, so I was less stable, more volatile, and _everything_ hurt and pissed me off _all the time_.”

The boys glance at each other and nod. Then Kylo catches part of what they’re thinking.

“And, yes, if I’d been so inclined, that was a problem I could have taken care of on my own. I used to do that when I was at Luke’s school. And then feel bad about it, because that was ‘giving in to my desires.’ Trust me, give in, give in a _lot,_ rub yourself raw if you need to, though lube helps with that, too. You’ll be better off for it. It’s… not as effective as with another person, assuming the other person even remotely likes you, but it’ll get the job done.” 

Which is where Finn and Poe also understand what Kylo’s saying. Finn’s looking shocked, and Poe says, “Wait… Nothing, at all, for ten months to a year?”

Kylo glares at him, though it’s more frustrated than angry. “I know I mentioned being celibate. Did I need to define that word for you? Wake up glued to my sleep pants every ten or so days, very rarely take matters into my own hands, but basically, yes.”

“Why would you do that to yourself?” Finn asks, shocked. He’s not sure he buys Ren’s get tuffed to stay sane thing, but… He was also assuming he was getting himself off, and without that…

Kylo glares at him, too, and this look has some anger in it. Finn’s still staring, amazed. Poe’s starting to get it.

“Why?” Finn’s still staring at him like Kylo isn’t human.

“Because there was a fucking monster in the back of my head telling me to use it to kill people. Telling me to save it up, and to ride the release with my literal saber. He was there, enjoying my pain and using me as a fucking emotional battery. You try jerking it with an audience telling you that it’s a weakness and you should just go kill things instead.”

All five of them wince at that.

“Yeah.” Kylo says, voice dry. “Between Luke and his don’t give in to your wants because that’s how you fall to the dark side, and Snoke’s turn every want into pain and death so I can use you for power, I didn’t exactly have a normal sex life until I was almost thirty. And, for you three, here’s more fun of Force sensitive sex, when you’re that close and intimately touching someone, you will generally be able to feel what’s going on in their head, which is amazing when you’re with someone who wants you, and shattering when you’re with someone who is tolerating you for your money or power.

“Unless you’re _particularly_ randy, which is part of what I had to be to shut the voices down, or better at shutting down your telepathy,” he’s looking at Jacen, “or empathy than I am, or you really don’t care what people think of you, I don’t recommend fucking professionals. It’ll be beyond disappointing.”

The other five of them stare at each other, and then Poe makes himself snigger to lighten the mood, and get them off of this, because _this_ is a hell of a lot darker than he wants to go with his ‘let’s get together and try to get to know each other better, talk about sex, and have a generally good time’ plan. Granted, it’s also making _Kylo Ren_ make a lot more sense. “That’s the difference between a pro who wants to work with you and one who doesn’t. Trust me, in the right place, they _like_ their jobs; that’s why they work there. Even without magic, most of us still have enough of the big head thinking to be able to sense if someone doesn’t actually want to touch the little one. And, yeah, if you get the sense your partner doesn’t want you or sex with you, that’s… Just get out of that. And if you’re so drunk you can’t tell the difference, you’ve got no business fucking anyone, paid or not.” He takes another sip of his drink, and thinks of something. “You three should have an advantage at finding people who really _like_ their work, and like the look of working with you.”

Kylo thinks about that, remembering the massage techs he and Rey visited on their vacation. He intentionally makes himself think of something they enjoyed, together, makes himself pull out of his own dark. “He’s probably right. Rey and I—“

“Stop!” Jacen says. “You _and_ Rey. Why are you visiting pleasure specialists _with_ Rey?”

A wave of shocked and curious is cresting over Kylo from the boys. Jacen’s titillated, Critt’s curious, and Elias is trying to figure out how more than two might even work.

“Okay… Uh…” He’s looking to Poe and Finn, trying to figure out how to get out of this, but Poe’s just smirking, and Finn’s looking curious, so… “Pleasure specialists don’t just fuck you. If you’re a twit… or _under extenuating circumstances_ … you might just get tuffed, but if you’re not, get a full hour or more and let them _work_ on you. Their job is to make you feel good, and that means any bit of you that likes getting rubbed can get rubbed. And if you’re anything like me, just about all of you actually likes getting rubbed. And, yeah, I’ve got more shaft than the next two guys,” he eyes Finn and Poe, silently naming the next two guys. “Put together.” Finn rolls his eyes, and Poe leans across the table and punches his shoulder, though he's smiling as he does it, pleased that Ren’s willing to make a comment like that. “But it’s still not most of my body, or particularly difficult to avoid touching, even when I’m naked, so… We were getting massages, together. And someone who _knows_ how to rub you down is an experience I highly recommend, especially if they happen to be attractive wo—“ he remembers Jacen and Poe are here, “people, who are not wearing a ton of clothing, and you get to watch them rub on your partner at the same time. That was _a lot_ of fun, and with luck we’ll get to do it again sometime soon.

“Anyway, the point was, the ladies working with us were having a good time, and they liked talking to us, and it did feel good, in my head, and feelings, and body, and that was a really good experience, unlike one of the others I’ve had where the lady was counting each thrust in her head wondering if I’d make it to twenty-five strokes or not, and hoping I couldn’t, because she didn’t exactly enjoy my company or size and just wanted me to get done before her jaw cramped up.”

Finn, Poe, and Jacen wince at that because they can all imagine it.

“Did you?” Jacen asks.

“No, but not the way you’re thinking. I went soft, stormed out, and spent the next hour breaking shit, with Snoke cackling in the back of my head. And then the next day Hux lectured me about breaking expensive equipment.”

Poe exhales long and low at that, and even Finn looks troubled.

Kylo half-shakes his head, not wanting to dwell on that. He gets back to where they started. The slicks packs. He taps Critt's the one nearest to him. “Do you three actually know how to put those things on?”

Finn leaps onto that. The last thing he wants is empathy for Ren, but it’s threatening to break out if they keep talking about Snoke, so… “Good point. They don’t work right and are fairly uncomfortable if you don’t know what you’re doing!”

Kylo notices the way Elias is staring at the slicks packs. Then he remembers what Elias thought sex was. And he realizes that if they wait for Elias to ask for clarification, they’re going to die of old age, because Elias can feel the two other boys seem to know something he doesn’t, so… “Okay, back further. What these things go on, and why put them on, and what you intend to do with yourself and your friend once you’ve got them on.”

Finn and Poe catch Ren’s eye and realize that, okay, they need to go way back on this, and start at the beginning, and that they’d been making some assumptions that were likely unwarranted, and that it’s possible that adding a basic human reproduction class to the things MX-6 teaches would be in order.

Poe decides to go all the way back. “Have you three played with yourselves enough to get off?”

That gets eye rolls and nodding and three separate waves of adolescent annoyance aimed at him, though Kylo’s the only adult who can actually feel it.

“Quit that. He’s not being an ass. None of us have done this before, and it’ll go better if we know what sort of stuff you guys know.”

“And unlike those two, I also didn’t get this from your side, either,” Finn adds.

Kylo shakes his head. “I didn’t get _this_. Five minutes of mechanics followed by twenty-five minutes of keep your hands to yourself, and off of yourself, meditate to calm yourself, and give up your wants to the Force, was not _this._ ”

“What did you get?” Poe asks Finn, hoping this’ll help build some empathy in his direction from Ren.

“Twenty-minute-long holovid on the mechanics of reproduction and reproductive anatomy, followed by implants at fourteen, and the older guys trying to get us to go see the pleasure specialists.”

“Why didn’t you?” Jacen asks. “I mean… If we had them here…”

“You like sex, right?” Critt asks.

“I like sex just fine. I love sex. With Rose. The First Order tried to keep us focused on work.”

“That’s part of why there are pleasure specialists. It’s easier to meet other people’s wants if your needs are met. You can focus on your work better if you’re not constantly randy. That’s why _the Order_ has them.” Kylo sighs. “And it dulls down empathy for the people you conquer… You’re less likely to find one to get emotionally attached to if you’re not fucking them. That’s why the _First Order_ had them.”

Finn just looks at Ren when he says that. He’s never thought about why they were there, but… “Captain Phasma did her best to keep us on the fight, all the time. Focused on fighting, on training, on— Why are you smirking?” he shoots at Ren

“Because she was fucking Hux, and occasionally both of them, together would go visit the pleasure specialists.”

Finn winces. “Oh…” He looks like he’s got a bad taste in his mouth. “I did not need to know that. Uglh.” He just stares at Ren. “Hux? She’d break him like a twig.”

Ren shrugs. “I couldn’t avoid their feelings at each other, but I did my best to avoid most of the details. Whatever it was she liked, he could give her, and vice versa. Sometimes when we’d train, I’d see bruises and teeth marks, but… she wanted him to put them there.”

Finn’s lip curls, he hates that he wants to ask, but… He does it. She’d been lurking in his nightmares for more than a decade, and all he’d ever seen was one eye. “What did she look like?”

Ren sighs. He wonders a bit what she might have become out from under Snoke and Hux’s influence. Wonders if she’d have been willing to be part of The Order. He puts those thoughts aside, too. “Tall. She was as tall as I am. Broad and well-muscled, not just for a woman. She was big, bigger than Poe in all directions. She could bench press you, or me, and both of us together. Big hands and feet. Blonde hair, short, wavy. Blue eyes.” His expression softens, a little. “She wasn’t pretty, but she did have pretty eyes. Determined.”

“Determined?” Jacen asks. “That’s a look?”

Finn’s nodding though. “On her, even under head to toe chrome armor, it was.”

“She could take me down in a hand to hand fight.”

“Did you like her?” Poe asks.

Ren shakes his head. “Not on any level or definition of the word you’re thinking of. I respected her.”

“You _respected_ her,” Finn’s voice is curling with derision. “She gave up Starkiller to save herself. That’s how we broke it.”

Ren half shrugs. “She wouldn’t have been the first person to value herself over a horde of nameless, faceless strangers. That’s part of why he made sure you were in that fucking armor all the time. So, you couldn’t build that kind of attachment to each other.”

Poe decides they’re far enough afield, and yanks them back. “So, you’re busy working your way to officer material…”

“Right…” Finn nods, willing to try to get back onto topic. “Uh… Yeah. So… The older guys keep pushing, trying to get us to go visit the Specs.”

“Specs?” Critt asks.

“We had slang for everything. Pleasure Specialists became Specs. But… I’m busy. I’m tired. I'm spending most of my non-training time studying up on  _everything._ Good officers need to know their own systems in and out, and as many of the other ones as they can. There are holovids with some really _interesting_ material on them. Ten credits’ll get you a mountain of them. Ten credits will also get you about thirty seconds with a Spec. No one ever told me my hands needed to stay above my blankets, and I can get myself off just fine, so paying someone else to do it didn’t interest me.”

Poe thinks the next bit matters, so he adds, “And then you met Rose.”

Finn nods. “And then I met Rose, and suddenly someone else doing it was a _LOT_ more interesting.”

Poe gives him a little poke. A non-verbal _keep going._

“And, eventually she got her hands on me and vice versa, and, uh… It’s a distinctly different set of sensations from doing it yourself, and they’re _really_ nice, and… Uh, especially right before and a few months after Paige was born, I went back to being best buddies with Ms. Righty,” he wiggles his fingers, “and I’m much happier playing with her than with myself.”

“Which gets us back to basic sex, making babies. Uh…” Poe glances at the other two men. “I don’t actually know how to do that. My dad had this chat with me, so, I mean, I _know,_ but, I’ve never seen a woman naked or had sex with one, so…”

“So…” Finn’s staring at Ren.

“You’re the one who’s actually done it,” Ren says back.

This is where the boys are getting confused because it’s clear that all of them know at least the most basic of basics and they’re under the impression that Finn and Ren should be talking about the same basic thing.

Kylo catches the confusion. “He got his wife pregnant. I haven’t. We’ve both had sex. And, yes, it works the same if you’re trying to make babies or not.”

Finn half-inclines his head. “The mechanics are probably about the same for guys, too. Just a different target.”

Poe shakes his head. “No!”

“No?” Finn asks.

“Let’s get sex with women done first, and then we’ll compare and contrast.”

Finn sighs. “Okay, shaft gets hard. Assuming you don’t want to be a dad, and you don’t have an implant—“

“What’s an implant?” Elias asks.

“It’s a small injection in the tubes between your stones and shaft. Makes sure the sperm can’t get out,” Ren says.

“So… can you… still come, with one of them?” Jacen asks. It’s clear on his face that if implants work the way he thinks they do, they’re some sort of torture device.

Kylo nods. “There’s… a few tubes… maybe?” This would be when Kylo realizes he doesn’t exactly know how the implant works. “I don’t know, really. It’s a shot, one on each stone, it hurts for a few days, it takes two months to really kick in, then no babies for three years. But, yes, you can still spurt.”

“They put a needle in your stones?” Critt’s staring at him in horror. Jacen and Elias are wincing and curling in on themselves.

Finn rolls his eyes. “Some of us didn’t have a choice in the matter. The First Order didn’t want us leaving bastards in our wake.”

“Didn’t want you getting attached to any babies you might have made,” Kylo adds. “And it’s not mandatory for anyone past their first five years, now.”

Finn rolls his eyes. “And yeah, it hurts, but…” he pokes the slick packet. “These things don’t always work. You don’t always have one. And… it feels better without one.”

“A little pain now for peace of mind and more pleasure later,” Ren says.

“A little?” Elias asks.

“I’m not saying I’d have it done regularly for fun, but… compared to,” Ren rolls his eyes a little and gestures to his face. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

 

 

Finn nods. “Numbing gel, shots, they’d usually time it so you’d get it before your two off, but if not, a day or two of light duty and feeling achy, and you’re done.”

“Numbing gel?” Ren asks Finn, his voice creeping up toward the next octave as it occurs to him that maybe it didn’t have to hurt _that much_.

Now Finn’s staring at Ren in horror. “Did you get it done without?”

“What’s numbing gel?” Ren’s also looking horrified.

“You don’t know what numbing gel is… What the fuck?” Finn says.

Ren doesn’t make a noise. He’s stunned beyond the capacity to verbalize.

Poe’s looking from one of them to the other, and the kids are also staring in amazement.

Finally, Kylo gets his voice back and says, “I don’t take pain meds. Morphe or anything like that. They… mess with my head. Visions that I don’t want to see. Would I be correct in guessing that numbing gel is…”

“A wet gel they just rub on the skin and it makes the bit of your body under it go numb,” Finn says. "It doesn't mess with your head. Won't deal with any sort of serious pain, or anything full body, but... You know Morphe is like... only for  _really_ bad injuries. There's a  _lot_ of options that don't fuck your head up."

Ren’s glaring at his mental image of the med droid. “If you tell the med droids no pain meds, apparently they give you _no_ pain meds. No, I didn’t know numbing gel was a thing.”

“So, if you ever decide to get implants, make sure they give you numbing gel. With it, it kind of pinches, and you likely don’t want to watch them do it, but it’s mostly just uncomfortable, not _pain,_ ” Finn says.

“Great. We’ve got implants covered. So, you’re hard, your friend wants to have sex with you, you’ve got a pack of rubbers…” Poe’s saying.

“Why do you call them that?” Ren asks.

“Because, at least where I’m from, there’s this stuff, called rubber, that’s awfully similar to what they make these out of. Why do you call them slicks?” He’s noticed that that’s one of the few other things Kylo and Finn agree on, the little sheathes in front of them are ‘slicks.’

“Because the ones the First Order had are lubricated, and slick.” Ren nods at the rubbers in front of them. “Are these not lubricated? Is that why you’ve got the bottles?”

“They’re lubed, but if you’re having sex with a man, you’re going to want more lube than comes on a rubber.”

“Okay,” Finn says. “You and your sweetie are looking to have sex. You’re ready to go. Except you don’t have the slick… rubber on, yet.” He’s opening one of the boxes.

“Hey! I might need that!” Jacen chirps at the idea of losing one of his.

The three older men don’t roll their eyes at that, because of the boys, Jacen’s the one least likely to need them any time soon. He still feels them all think it. He glares at them for that.

“I’ll replace it,” Kylo says. He’s gone for a second, and then back, and tosses another one at Jacen. “Go ahead.”

“Wait. Why do you have these? Didn’t we just cover implants?” Jacen asks, looking at the slick Ren just threw at him.

“I’m willing to give you that because I _don’t need it._ ”

“Oh.” Jacen cracks a grin. “Got any more?”

Kylo sips his coffee. “Use two of the first three and come talk to me.”

Jacen glares a little at that.

Finn waves the slick in his hand around to get their attention. “They’re made to be opened with one hand, in the dark, by people who are too horny to see straight,” Finn says, placing the disk on his thumb. “Balance it on your thumb, put your index finger and middle fingers on the rim, push,” he does and the pack splits, and the slick slips out. “You wanna demonstrate?” he says to Ren, daring him to take this the next step.

“Why in the dark?” Elias asks.

“Lots of people like to have sex in the dark, and no I don’t know why,” Poe replies. “Okay, Ren, show us how to use one.”

Ren rolls his eyes. “Sure.” He grabs Critt’s empty cider bottle. “You done with that?” Critt nods. “Obviously, this is not exactly how it works. Pinch the tip.”

“Wait.” Poe says, “Grab the lube, put a drop or two in the tip, then continue on.”

Finn and Ren are staring at him. Poe shrugs. “It’ll feel better.”

“Pretend I put some lube in it. Pinch the tip, put it on your tip,” he settles it over the mouth of the bottle. “Roll it down.” It’s not exactly rolling down easy, but a cider bottle isn’t exactly shaft-shaped, either. “Once it’s all the way down, you’re ready to go.”

“Pro-tip,” Poe adds, “practice a few times on your own before you do this with someone else. Don’t worry about not having enough of them. I’ll make sure the med bay stays stocked. You need them, just go get them.”

“When you’re done, pull out, make sure you’re holding onto it, so it doesn’t leak, or you don’t accidentally leave it in her, pull it off, tie it up, and toss it,” Finn says.

The boys are staring at the prophylactic-ed bottle, and Critt’s the one who decides to actually ask. “So, uh… what do you… _do_ … in between putting it on and taking it off?”

The men look at each other. Ren says, “That’s… uh… probably going to depend on how close to spurting you are, and how close to spurting she is—“

“Wait. Women spurt?” Jacen’s staring at Ren. “Okay, I’ve never… not with one of them, but… They don’t…” He’s gesturing toward his lap. “have the equipment for that, right?”

Ren sighs. “Come… Spend… Get off… They do that. If they can literally spurt, I’ve never seen it. They can… drip, sometimes, or leak, but I’ve never seen spurting.”

Finn half inclines his head. “I’ve seen pictures of it on holovids. I think she was peeing though. Rose doesn’t think it really happens. But they can do the feel really good and twitch part of it, just like us. And, yeah, if she’s having a really good time, she’ll get really wet, and sometimes she can drip or leak or… Ren said it earlier, if she wants to have sex with you, her body’s going to get wet and slick and just going to let you right on in, and it’s going to feel amazing.”

“Wet and snug and slick and hot and… It’s _really_ good. And it smells good, and tastes good, and assuming you like women, you’ll like touching and smelling and tasting it,” Kylo adds.

Poe breaks in there. “Good point, if… whatever it is, mouth, delta, ass… anything, doesn’t look and smell good enough to lick, _don’t put your shaft in it,_ rubber or not. Your sense of smell and taste are your first line of defense on this. Beyond peeing liquid fire, there are a bunch of fun, by which I mean terrifying and painful, diseases out there, that you can catch by sticking your shaft in places it shouldn’t go.”

That’s got the boys attention.

“That said, if she’s… he’s… healthy and clean, you’re probably going to want to lick it,” Kylo says. “Or they’re going to want you to lick it. Or, maybe both at once.”

Finn’s got a big grin on his face there.

Critt’s looking confused. “How are you tasting it if you’re… in her.”

Ren looks down, biting his lip, trying not to laugh. Then he swallows and looks up. “I meant both of you licking each other at once. Uh…” He’s never tried to think of a name for that. “Tops to tails.” That seems like it’s properly descriptive, though. “Unless you’re a lot more flexible than I am, you’re not fucking and licking at the same time.”

Poe, noticing that all four coffee cups are empty, gets Finn and Elias out of the booth, scoots himself out, and goes to make more.

Finn’s smirking. “But a man can dream, right?”

“Oh yeah! If I could do both at once, I would.” Kylo’s very pleased at the idea of that.

“One of the holovids had a guy with a girl on his shaft and face… talk about died and went to heaven…” Finn’s saying, enthusiastically. Kylo's very happily nodding along to that idea.

Poe’s chuckling at that as he’s measuring out more coffee. “About six years ago. I was on Hollan V, and there was this guy… Uh… He was _flexible_ and, you know, I’m not build like a girl,” He holds his fingers out, about waist high, indicating that someone wouldn’t have to get their mouth quite so close to his pelvis as he would to a woman, “so… he had me coming and going at once, and that…” He’s got a dreamy look on his face, and a slow, satisfied nod. “That was a treat.”

“Rey’s done something like that. Fingers and mouth, and… yeah…”

Poe’s looking shocked. “You let her…”

Ren’s surprised that Poe’s shocked, but… he rolls with it. “What do you mean? Let? Once I knew it was a possibility, I more or less rolled over and said, 'yes, please!' You’re the one who gave her the idea in the first place. Which was a good one! So, yeah, sure. It felt good. It feels good when a guy does it to you, right?”

Poe nods. “Yeah, it does, but… Uh… Men who are narrow for women don’t generally seem to like that.”

Judging by the way Finn’s just watching them, and not immediately hopping on the idea or expounding on how he thought it was tons of fun, too, Poe might be onto something with that theory.

Ren shrugs. “I do.” Poe’s just staring at him. And Ren knows what he’s thinking. He rolls his eyes a bit. “Unless I’ve got a big surprise coming for me late in life, _just women._ ”

“Guys, you’ve lost me again,” Elias says.

“And didn’t answer the original question,” Critt adds.

“Okay, one more detour, and then we’ll get there,” Poe says. “You’re with a guy, or a woman, hoping to do anal. Unless this is something you do _a lot,_ which we know isn’t the case here, you can’t just shove your shaft on in. If you just hop on him and try to shove it in him, even with lube, you’re going to hurt him, and honestly, it’s not going to feel all that great for you, either. There really is such a thing as too tight, and an ass that isn’t ready for you is going to be too tight. So, fingering. Lots of people have different ideas on what feels good with this, so… try it on yourself before you do it to someone else, but, in general, lots of lube, slow, start with one finger, rub it around a bit, and when that’s comfortable, you can go to two. Some guys’ll do three, some’ll just go for shaft. Mostly, the muscles in your ass are designed to stay shut most of the time, so you just want to help ‘em relax a bit.”

Jacen sort of rolls his eyes, feeling stupid asking, but… This feels like something he probably needs to know. “Uh… messy?”

Poe blinks. It’s been so long since this wasn’t part of his ‘getting ready for a good time’ routine he’d forgotten it’s something you need to teach people. “Oh, yeah. Right. Yes, it _really_ can be. Use a rubber on anything you’re going to stick into someone’s ass, make sure it’s got lots of lube on it, or make sure you’ve cleaned yourself out first.”

Both Jacen and Kylo (who is suddenly wondering about when Rey’s done it to him) are staring at Poe.

He shrugs a bit. “Sex is messy. That’s true no matter what you’re doing. And, honestly… look, a little shit here and there isn’t the end of the world. Just make sure you wash up thoroughly and pee after any adventure where you’re on the penetrating side of things.”

“Wait!” Finn hops in. “For the girls. I don’t know if Rose mentioned that, and with the way Rey heals up, she probably doesn’t know. Make sure the girls pee after you have sex with them, or they can get the same kind of sick Poe was talking about. Seriously, nothing kills the ‘we just had sex’ glow like a urinary tract infection.”

Poe looks thoughtful at that, and Kylo blinks, because that wasn’t anything in his sphere of knowledge. Poe continues on, “If you want to try anything anal, absolute bare minimum, hit the head first, take a shit, and make sure you’ve washed everything. If you’ve got time, and you want your sweetie to not need to use a slick, get an enema, read the damn directions, and use it, wait half an hour, and then do it again. When the water comes out clean, you’re good to go.”

Elias and Critt squirm a bit at that. Poe puts the refilled coffee cups on the table, waits for Elias and Finn to budge over, and sits down.

Jacen nods. “Sure. Fine. We’re cleaned up and moved to penetration, now what?”

“Unless you think you’re going to spurt in the next heartbeat or two, you’re likely going to want to move,” Ren says.

Poe adds a very descriptive hand gesture. The boys, and Ren, snigger at that. Finn stares at the ceiling, indicating he's vastly too mature to be involved in a discussion with hand puppets.

 

 

“And if you are going to?” Elias asks. What he and Magiit have done might not be _sex_ per se, but he’s more than familiar with the sensation of being two strokes away from spending in his trousers.

“Stay very still and let it pass, or if you’ve got another slick, move fast, enjoy it, then take care of her, and go at it again in bit. You three are young. If you’ve got an hour, you can likely do it at least twice if not three times, so… It’s up to you,” Ren says.

“Or, be smart about it, pick a time where you’ve got enough time to get your partner off first, and then if you get off in ten seconds, it’s not a big deal, because she’s not disappointed,” Finn says.

“Or, she sucks you off first, you take care of her, you both have a bit of a cuddle and rest, and then when she’s on you, you’re toned down enough to last more than a minute, and you have a good time together,” Ren adds.

Finn decides to say something vaguely vulnerable. “Uh… Our first time. Our first time together, and my first time, period. I knew I wasn’t going to last. Not… without help. So… We’d been having dinner, talking, flirting, her hand’s on my thigh, and it’s just moving higher and higher up, and there’s no one else around, so after dinner things are going to get hot, so… I excused myself, jerked it, _fast_ and between what’d she’d been doing to me and what she was going to be doing to me, I didn’t have any trouble getting done quick, and that bought me enough time to really pay attention to her before my shaft got back into play and I was having a hard time focusing on anything else. Pretty much, do whatever you’ve got to do to make sure she has her good time, _first._ Then you get off.”

“The reverse of this is true if you’re penetrating another man. If you’re in him, you want to get off first. Maybe not by a lot, but prostates, the little nub inside you that feels _really_ good to touch, are _sensitive_ after you get off, and do _not_ appreciate getting poked then. Just like your stones probably like a bit of attention while your fucking, and DO NOT want anyone pressing on them at any other time. So, try to time it so you fire off a few strokes before he does, and that should leave everyone happy,” Poe adds.

That’s a deluge of information over the boys, and finally Jacen’s the one to say, “Okay, great. Move it, _how_?”

Poe’s looking from Jacen to Ren, and back to Jacen, because he was the one making a big show of not being a virgin, and Ren didn’t twig to it as a lie, so…

“I’ve given head before. Gotten it once, too. So, I know what to do with my mouth. Less so with my hips.”

Poe nods. “It’s similar.” He does that hand gesture again. “The in-out’s pretty much the same no matter what. But, yeah, hips move more when you’re fucking,” He curls his left hand into a loose fist and moves it over his extended right index and middle finger, both hands rubbing against each other. “And hopefully, when you’re getting sucked, you keep ‘em pretty still,” this time just the fist moves, and he keeps the pointer finger and middle finger still, “because you don’t want to choke your partner. I’ve met exactly no one who appreciates getting gagged by a shaft. And, anal with a guy…” Poe stares at his fist for a moment, then he flips it so that his thumb is pointing toward the ceiling and away from his body, “Speaking of things I never thought I’d be doing finger puppets for. Okay. If this is his shaft,” he wiggles his thumb, “when you’re inside him, your aiming for his prostate, which is,” he slips his fingers into his fist, pinky finger side, and wiggles them where his thumb connects to his wrist, “about here. Touching it generally feels really good, but, again, lots of lube, go slow, keep talking, and go find your own first, and get an idea of what it likes.”

The boys look at least somewhat intrigued by that.

“There’s a spot like that on a woman, too. Uh… not in their ass… or if there is, I don’t know about it,” Ren says. “But, same general sort of place in their sheath. I haven’t found a good way to reliably hit it when fucking, but fingers work just fine,” he wiggles his index and middle finger together, showing off the motion, “If there’s a way to make your shaft do that, I don’t know how. Fingers are good at that, and if you pair it with your tongue, you’ve got a happy woman.”

Poe adds, “Okay, actually, yeah. Reliably hitting a prostate while fucking is difficult, too. Some positions make it easier, but fingers are a lot better at that.”

“With a woman… when you’re fucking, you can wiggle and grind and whatnot, but… Uh… I mean… Shit,” Finn looks at Poe. “You don’t have any… I mean… Back at our place, on my datapad… Uh.”

Ren smirks. “A picture’s worth a thousand words, right?”

“Right,” Finn says. “And I bet he doesn’t have the right sort of pictures.”

“You have a copy of the full library?” Ren asks Poe.

“Yeah.”

“Go get it.”

“Why?” Finn asks.

“Because it’s Orlac’s library, and he, at least officially, runs an art school, and art schools paint nudes, a lot of them, and I know for a fact he’s got some interesting pictures on there.” Then he turns to the kids. “And yes, these are on your libraries, too, and I’m not saying you can’t enjoy them, but if you boogers decide to use this information to spend the next six weeks locked in your cabins rubbing yourselves raw, I’m going to delete all the good stuff off your copies. You still need to show up for meals and chores and lessons, so, use this information _wisely._ ”

All three boys look _deeply_ intrigued by this.

Poe hands his library over. Ren queues up the search feature, puts in erotic nudes, and goes skipping through the list for the one he thinks has the most useful pictures of the bunch. He then goes whipping through the images, because the last thing he needs to do right now is spend enough time really looking at them to get excited, because that’ll just make things awkward, but eventually he gets to the image he wants.

“Human female sexual anatomy, all laid out for you. This lady doesn’t seem to have any body hair, but most adult women do, so, pretend she’s got hair.”

“All over…” Critt sounds like he can’t wrap his head around that.

“Like your body. The pink parts don’t have any or much hair, the normal skin colored ones do,” Finn adds, sketching out the triangle where the hair would normally be, which helps to clarify things. He taps the lady’s pearl. “Think of that as your shaft. Yes, she can have a good time without you touching it, but, like with your body, it’s really difficult to get off without touching it.”

“It’s tiny,” Jacen says, staring. “How… do you… What do you do with it?”

Poe shrugs. This is the first time he’s really looked at a picture of a naked woman, and _tiny_ is the first thought that came to his mind, too. The billion and one comments he’s overheard his different female friends make about their partners not being able to find it are making a lot more sense.

“Lick it, kiss it, stroke it, suck it,” Ren taps his middle finger against the table and makes small circles with it, “circle it, grind your palm against it, kiss it some more, rub your shaft against it,”

“Get her on top of you, she bounces up and down, and you rub your thumb over it,” Finn shows off his back and forth gesture. “You get on top of her, in and out is for you, grinding your pelvis against it is for her.”

“She’s on her hands and knees, you use one hand to support yourself, the other is on her boob, and she touches it herself…” Ren adds.

“Just make sure that someone is touching it,” Finn says. “Doesn’t have to be you, but knowing you got her off is a kick.” 

“What about,” Elias points to all of the rest of the woman’s delta. “What’s…” He’s blushing furiously. “Uh… the target?”

Kylo doesn’t laugh, because, yes, this is a picture of a completely naked woman, lying on her back, one leg bent at the hip and knee, the other spread to the side, so it’s a _nice_ view, but she’s not spreading her inner lips apart, so it’s not _that good_ of a view.

He lightly touches the screen. “Those spread apart, and between them is her sheath.”

“So, you just… focus on her… pearl?” Critt says.

Ren shakes his head. “Spend a lot of time on it, but… Especially when you’re starting out, touch all of it. Be gentle. She’ll let you know when not to be gentle. If she’s got hair you can lightly tug on it, and that’s nice. But, just, touch it. Get on your knees or have her straddle you so you’ve got a good view of what you’re doing, and touch it. Like I said earlier, if she wants you, she’ll let you in. The happier she is, everything gets wet, and swollen and puffy, and those’ll open for you.”

“Gentle, though,” Finn repeats. “It’s likely you like to be touched a _lot_ harder than she does, at least at first. So, go soft, and she’ll let you know when to use more pressure. And… all of it. Her pussy, her legs, her belly, her butt, and tits, and… If there’s a spot on a woman that doesn’t like to be touched, I’ve never found it. Hell, you can kiss her elbows, and if she likes you, she’ll likely like that, too.”

Ren’s nodding along, and Poe’s feeling pretty satisfied to see the two of them agreeing about something. “If she’s in front of you, on her side, and you’re behind, and on your side, you can snuggle up close, drape her top leg back and over your hip, and you’ll have free access with your hands to touch everything, and your lips can get to her neck and shoulders and ears and… That’s really good.”

“Spoons. That’s what Rose calls that. Spoons is good. Especially first thing in the morning, when you’re mostly asleep, but your shaft’s up, because it’s morning, and…”

“That’s generally where _between_ comes into play, because that’s good with a man, too. You’re half asleep, but your shaft’s not, and it’s partially dream, and partially real, and you just reach around—“

And Ren’s still nodding along. Then he looks at Poe, “Until some idiot shows up first thing in the morning waving muffins in your face.”

“I did that _once._ Come on, even you aren’t so dark you need to get tuffed every single night and every single morning. You can take a day of missing out on your morning shag.”

“Shag?” Critt asks.

“Shag, fuck, tuff, slam, score, roger, canoodle—“

“Canoodle, really?” Finn asks.

“Yeah, I don’t know where that one comes from. Look, there’s a million words for sex,” Poe says, “They all basically mean the same thing, up, in-out in-out, and done.”

“Commune,” Ren adds. “That was the Jedi term, _physically communing together in mutual accord and affection_.”  

“I thought Jedi weren’t supposed to… commune… at all,” Finn says.

“ _We_ weren’t. But, supposedly, a master who was well-grounded in the light, with a suitably well-grounded partner could commune in an effort to enhance their knowledge of themselves, the Force, and the light.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun,” Jacen says.

Kylo shrugs. “Last year, I agreed with that. Now… Uh… Rey and I have done a lot of fucking, and had an absolute blast at it. And when Luke was explaining it to me, I think he meant commune as a ‘nice’ synonym for fuck. He was celibate, as best I know, truly celibate, and probably asexual, too, so I don’t think he knew that sex has… levels… flavors… whatever. But the Jedi who wrote about it in the books he was telling us about, they knew, and Rey and I’ve communed, too, and it’s… Do you know what the word ecstasy means?”

It’s clear the boys don’t. Finn and Poe don’t appear to, either.

“Not surprising, it’s a religious term. The idea is that when you’ve got something immensely good, a mix of pleasure and joy and happiness and sharp, crystalline _good_ usually wrapped in a sense of religious euphoria…” And he lost the other five with that one. Apparently, they’re all expanding their vocabularies today. “joy. It’s… tasting the Force, feeling wrapped in it, bathed in light and good, and… And if you’re really communing, you can get there, and that’s… Uh… Okay, spurting is sharp and good and your body sings and your heart races and you feel tingly and glow-y all over, and that’s good. Communing, really communing is all of that, all over, in your head and heart and shaft and then take it up a few levels, and… You hit a point where your bodies fall away, where it feels good, but… When you’re fucking, it feels good in your shaft and stones, and when you’re communing it’s just _good_ all over, and your brains sort of meld, and you don’t know where she begins and you end and if you’re really in it… Uh…There’s the old mantra, ‘I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,’ and okay, yeah, that sounds dry and stupid, but… You… you and her, together, one, flow into and with the Force and… Fun’s not the word. It’s not _fun._ But it is intense and present and real, and ecstatic and… Uh… yeah… If you can do it, _do it_ because it’s amazing, but… We’ve only managed it once…” Ren bites his lip. That’s advanced sex, and they’re not there. Basic though…

“Okay, sex for Force users. Slipping out of your head and into hers, and vice versa, is, from what I can tell, at least for Rey and I, pretty easy. And,” he looks at the picture in front of them, “Don’t get me wrong, good technique is useful, but… She can feel if she’s making me feel good. And I can _feel_ if I’m doing something she likes. And, honestly, sometimes it’s just easier to have both of us ride off of how I’m feeling, because of the two of us, I’m the easier one to get spurting. But… I can be between her legs, happily licking away, and if she needs me to the left or right or harder or softer, I can usually, assuming I’m paying even the least attention to her, _feel_ where and how she needs it. I don’t know if you three will have that, but… You probably will to at least some degree, and that makes everything easier.

“And, even when we aren’t communing, when we’re just together and present and _with_ each other, it’s really easy for my mind and hers to get all tangled up.”

“Does that always happen?” Finn asks, feeling like this is a major piece in the why Rey’s having anything to do with this guy puzzle.

“No,” Ren shrugs. “We can just fuck, too. It works that way for you and Rose, too, right? Sometimes you’re just randy and having a quick one because it feels good, and sometimes it’s deep and present and emotional and real and _different_ , right?”

“Yeah. I can’t… feel it through her body, or get into her head, but, yeah, sometimes you’re just getting off with your favorite person because you like getting off, and sometimes it’s a lot deeper and more intense, real. Slow and steady and present and you just _feel_ their love for you, in their skin and your skin and through how you touch each other.”

“My dad called it making love,” Poe says. “Sometimes you’re fucking. And sometimes you’re making love. He told me I’d be able to tell the difference when it happened.”

“Did you?” Finn asks.

“Yeah. It’s been a long time, though.” Poe says. He shrugs a little. And both Ren and Elias can feel the wave of longing that goes with that. Kylo reaches across the table and gives his hand a squeeze, which shocks everyone else. Poe squeezes back, and says, “They say you know when you meet the right person, but since that’s not been working out so hot, these days, I settle for men who like to fuck other men, and that’s enough.”

Kylo’s curious about that, but he’s got the good sense not to ask about it, not now.

“I didn’t know when I met Rose. She says she knew when she met me, but… I didn’t know until she was saying to me, ‘We’re going to win by saving the things we love,’ and then she kissed me, and then I knew, and then I just about died because she passed out, and she was bleeding, and I thought she’d died, and… It was fifteen hours before she woke up, and when she woke up and said my name, I knew,” Finn says.

They’re all looking at Kylo, so he says, “There was… I guess I was ten. I don’t remember the day, not like Tuesday the Fifteenth of the sixth month of ABY 15. Not like that. But… There was a day, and I was… older than eight. I was at Luke’s school. And younger than twelve, because Kumman hadn’t joined us, yet. I was twelve when he came, so… Sometime between eight and twelve. And there had always been the dark presence in my head. I thought it was my grandfather. It wasn’t. And then one day this tiny little light was there, too. It didn’t have a voice, or name, or anything like that, just a feel. The dark voice didn’t like it. He told me to ignore it. That it was trying to drag me away from my destiny. And it didn’t do anything. It didn’t talk to me the way the voice did. Sometimes it was brighter, sometimes more dim, and sometimes I got the sense it was happy or sad or hurting, but… It was just a light. A very small light.

“I do remember when I finally saw who the light was attached to. Takodana.” He looks to Finn. “You were there, too, right?”

Finn nods.

“I was in the forest, looking for the droid, and I found a girl. I wasn’t looking for her. But… I found her. She felt, important. She mattered; in a way I didn’t expect. I knew my father was there. I could feel my mother coming. Snoke was mucking about in my head telling me something important was coming, and all I wanted to do was snark at him with something like, ‘No shit. The Force drops all three of us here at once, and you think something important is coming? Wow. Amaze me with your glorious insights into the nature of the Force, oh great and powerful master.’ But even thinking that is asking to get hit with a million volts of lightning, so I don’t think that. I thought about the girl, and realize she’s Force sensitive, too, and that I can feel her mind, and… She’s seen the map.

“I don’t need the droid. She’s seen the map, so I can grab her, and unlike the droid, which I can’t open to my will with the Force, I can read her mind. So, I grab her, take her with me, and when I start to question her, I’m riffing through her mind, and I can feel it, she’s my light. I think I said something like, ‘Oh, it is you!’ and she’s staring at me like I’m a moron—“

“She’s staring at you like you’re a moron because you’ve kidnapped her, tied her to a chair, and are interrogating her, and for some reason can’t figure out why she’s not instantly delighted to be in your company, Ren!”

Kylo glares at Finn but there’s no heat in it, given that that’s exactly what was happening, it’s not like Finn’s wrong. Then he shrugs a bit and continues on with, “because she may have been my light, but apparently she wasn’t aware of me as the boy she’d been sensing for years, that would come later, anyway…

“Rey’s been in your head since she was born?” Jacen asks.

Ren shrugs. “That, I don’t know. We don’t know how old she is. She was a child when she started to get a sense of the boy we think is me, so… That might have been about when her parents left her.”

“Oh,” Critt says. “That doesn’t sound like love, though. At least, not what Finn’s talking about.”

“It’s not,” Ren says. “Destiny and love are not the same thing, and at first, given how many years Snoke had been telling me that my little light was trouble, I was fairly sure she was going to kill me. But, she didn’t. And I didn’t kill her. And I killed Snoke. And together we killed the guards. And… I broke her heart, because I couldn’t be Ben, and she broke mine because she wouldn’t help me set the galaxy on fire, and time went by and we got to actually know each other, and I moved light and she moved dark, and we got to a point where we could love each other, and then did love each other, and there wasn’t just a moment of ‘Oh, you and me forever!’ it was a centimeter at a time, and we tangled into each other, and then we started having sex, and that tangled us even further, and now I’m not sure where I end and she begins, and we both rather like it that way, but I can’t point to a moment and say, ‘This, here, now’ is when it happened.” Kylo rubs his lips together. “It changes, too. Shifting. Not… not that we’re less in love or we don’t want each other, though I suppose that’s true for some people, my parents, I guess, but… What it… what love means, what we do by and for each other… You and Rose do that, too, right?”

Finn nods. “Yeah. The bedrock, you and me until the end, that’s solid, but… We have arguments, and conversations, and trying to figure out how to _be_ you and me to the end, but… the goal, the two of us together, with Paige, and any other children we may make, and a home, that’s what everything else has to serve, so there are… boundaries to the fights or conversations. We know where the journey has to take us, but we’re often talking about how to get there.”

Elias looks over at Poe. “Have you been in love?”

Poe shrugs a little. “Flying?” Jacen’s already raising an eyebrow at him. Then he shakes his head a bit, and pours himself a rum, straight, shooting it back fast. “No bantha shit. Uh… Yes. Long time ago. His name was Micah, and we were young and stupid and…” he smiles, but it’s sad, “and very in love.” Finn’s never heard this story, and he’s listening intently. Ren’s never heard it, either, though he’s guessed it exists. It has to, if this Force/balance/destiny thing is real. “We’d both been part of Leia’s protection detail, and we were both ace pilots, and… And we weren’t actively fighting then, but we were training, and… It was an accident. Close combat flying is dangerous, and he was taking a group of fliers up for their first low-atmo, close combat flying exercise. One of them misjudged how far apart they were, clipped the other’s wing, that one spun into Micah, and all three of them died. Just a stupid fucking training accident. There’s at least one every year, and we all know it, but… He’s the one who got burned.”

“How old were you?” Finn asks.

“Seventeen when we met. Twenty-two when he died.” There’s a small smile on Poe’s face. “Like I said, long time ago.”

“But not really,” Ren adds, voice soft.

Poe shrugs.

“So, you just… find strangers to sleep with?” Critt asks.

“More or less. I tend to sleep alone. I fuck strangers or near strangers. It’s easier, especially when we were fighting. I didn’t have to worry about getting hurt, or hurting anyone. Out of the twenty-five of us who left the New Republic as Leia’s hand-picked help, Connix and I are the only ones left. Everyone else is dead.” Finn’s glaring at Ren, and he looks embarrassed. Poe keeps talking. “And, I’ve had some guys I’ve been sweet on since, but I’m unerringly able to crush on men who don’t like fucking other men, so…” He shrugs at that, too. Kylo’s almost about to ask about Jon, but decides now isn’t the time. “Leia told me to get my head out of my ass once, and to stop doing that, and I'm trying, but… I mean… She never remarried after your dad,” he says to Ren.

“Easier advice to give than live,” Finn says, feeling very uncomfortable with what Poe just said and the way Jacen and Ren are looking at him. 

“How do you… know which ones like men?” Elias asks. He points to Jacen. “He had to tell us.”

“Talking is good,” Poe replies, pleased to be on this instead of his own deeper feelings. “Talking is your friend. Talking will get you in and out of a lot of situations you need to get into and out of. And… There are places people go when they’re looking to find sex and don’t want to pay for it, and some of them are just for men looking for men, or women looking for women, and some are for everyone looking for anyone. Anyway, there are more than a few places I’m familiar with where I’ve got much better than even odds of getting tuffed if that’s what I’m looking for.”

“If you just want to get tuffed, why not pay for it?” Jacen asks.

Poe doesn’t exactly shrug, but… “At a club, a hundred credits can get me a few good drinks, probably a few hours of good dancing, and more often than not, decently fucked, too. Or, at a brothel, it can get me fucked. I like getting fucked, but I like dancing and drinking, too. And, generally speaking, the more I want sex, the more likely I am to get it.”

“How do you do that without Force skills?” Critt says.

That makes Poe laugh. “Like a lot of men, the randier I get, the lower my standards drop, the easier it is to find someone to scratch the itch for me.”

The other five of them glance at each other, all of them able to imagine that. 

Finn’s the one who asks the next question, “You say, getting fucked… Are you… uh… giving or getting?”

Poe smirks. “I like both just fine.”

“How do you figure out who does what?” Jacen asks.

“Same way you figure out who does what for anything else. You _talk._ ” He looks at Ren and Finn. “They don’t do the same thing every time, either.”

The men nod. Ren adds, “We’ve got… Okay… This is probably stupid, but I think about it a lot like food. Snack sex. Something quick and easy just because you like how it tastes. The ten minute… shag?” Poe nods, he’s got the word right. “In the morning before you get up to go do whatever it is. Usually not a whole lot of talking with that because we’re generally both half-asleep. That’s normally the same thing every time. We sleep next to each other on our backs, but usually as we’re waking up, I spoon up behind her, and we’re not wearing pajamas, so…” He figures he doesn’t need to be more explicit than that. And, fortunately, it seems the boys are following along well enough he doesn’t need to. “Meal sex. That’s… like dinner. More variety than snacks, and you take longer to eat it, so, yeah, more talking with that. And some nights we actually talk, ahead of time, about what we’re going to do, or other nights we just sort of roll into it, but there’s uh… more on the menu… so we’ve got to talk to figure it out. Then there’s banquet sex, where everything you like is on the menu, and you’ve got the time to have some of all of it, and talking is definitely part of that, and not just in a what are we doing sort of way, but also because talking makes you feel good. It’s part of playing.”

The boys are just staring at him, but Finn’s smirking along, nodding.

“There are things that you _never_ think are going to come out of your mouth, or hers, but then she… says something, and no, I’m not saying what, but it will hit you _hard_ and you’ll want to hear a lot more things like that, and she’ll want to hear them from you, and…”

“It’s good,” Poe says. “There’s something to be said for the direct approach. Though, this is another pro-tip, you need a certain amount of swagger to pull this off cold, and probably at least five years more growing up, but having an attractive stranger walk over to you, gently brush your hair away from your ear, bend down, and whisper into it with what _exactly_ they want to do to and with you, _that_ feels good.”

Poe thinks about that for a moment, and looks at the boys in front of them. Then looks at Ren and Finn. “And let’s take a moment here about how to be attractive. Grooming 101. Head to toes. If it grows hair, wash it regularly. Top of your head can probably get by on just once a week, but more is likely better. Pits and pubes, do not go more than two days without applying soap or a sonic, and if you can’t avoid going longer, get a wash before you’ve got to be around people.” He glances at all three of them, and then sighs. They smell like teenage boys. “Deodorant, every time you wash. Every time you wash, foreskin gets pulled back, and the glans gets at least a rinse. Apply soap if there’s smeg all over your tip, otherwise water’s fine, okay?” They blush. “Look, you want someone to put it in their mouth, the odds of that increase dramatically if it smells and looks clean.”

“When you have a partner, getting clean together is a lot of fun,” Ren adds.

Finn nods. “And if you let your girl do you, you know you’re the way she likes you, after. And if you smell/look the way she wants you to, she’s a lot more likely to rub herself all over you, so that’s a good thing.”

“Shave or not as you see fit, but Jacen,” Poe reaches across and gently strokes Jacen’s cheek, “If you want more than your current bunny fluff, you’ve got to shave it more than twice before you grow it out.” Jacen glares at him, a little, with no real heat. Beard length is coming in fine for him, but the textures is _soft._ “If you want to talk razors and gear, we can do that later, or you can chat with Finn.”

“Why not you?” Jacen looks at Ren, who he figures has the closest hair texture to his own.

“Rey’s got a laser thing, so I only have to shave once a week, and these days she shaves me, which… uh… That’s fun. And, not exactly sex, but kind of like sex, but…” He’s coming to the conclusion that this is probably not necessary right now. Not only are the boys staring at him, but so are Finn and Poe. “But, she’ll tell you about the laser thing if you want to know more. It works, keep using it, and eventually, you won’t have to shave at all, so… if you want options, maybe not a plan.”

The boys nod at that, and return attention to Poe.

“Also, shave where you see fit. Some guys have no hair below their eyelashes. Some have lots. That’s generally going to be a personal preference thing. If you do your pubes, talk to me first, because there’s a trick to not wishing someone knocked the razor out of your hand before you started once it begins to grow back.”

The boys look disturbed by that. Finn looks intrigued.

Poe keeps going, “Fingernails get trimmed at least once a month. If you’ve got a partner who you intend to put your fingers in, nails get trimmed, filed, and scrubbed _regularly._ Do not put dirty fingers in someone else. Do not try to put raggedy, scraggly nails in someone else. I can tell you from personal experience that no one, ever, enjoyed getting a nail snagged in a sensitive area, okay?”

They nod.

Finn adds, “Though if you let them get a little long, trailing them over her back or neck or leg… Rose likes that. Just lightly. It’ll light up her skin and make her break out in head to toe goosebumps.”

“And if your friend has them… uh… not lightly can be fun, too,” Kylo adds.

Poe smirks. “You’ve got claw marks down your back, don’t you?”

“Not today,” Kylo replies with a wide grin.

“Rey’s so light, I doubt he keeps them for more than five minutes at a go,” Jacen adds.

Kylo just smirks.

“Back on track,” Poe says. “The rest of you gets washed when it gets dirty. Feet get washed _before_ they get smelly. Clean socks every day. Clean shorts, every day. The rest of your clothing is less strict, wash ‘em when they need it. And they need it _before_ they get smelly.”

Finn adds, "And all of you need to do your laundry. Yes, it's winter. No, you don't need to wash your clothing as often as you did in summer, but right now anything with a nose can smell you coming a klick away."

They look embarrassed about that.

Poe stops to think. “Cologne. If that’s something you want to chat about we can do that, too.”

“Just you?” Elias asks.

“Finn doesn’t wear it, and Ren appears to still be learning,” Poe replies.

The boys look confused about that. Jacen leans a little closer to Kylo. “He’s wearing some right now.”

Poe smirks. “Yeah, I know. He smell good to you, Elias?”

“Uh…” Elias is blushing. Ren’s eyes are narrowed. “Yeah, he does.”

Poe nods. “I bet. Like I said, learning. Somehow, either because it’s rubbed off from Rey, or he’s still a little rough on this, Ren’s wearing a woman’s scent.”

“How can scents have sexes?” Kylo sounds annoyed. “If it’s on my body, it’s a men’s scent.”

Poe snerks a little at that. “Finn? You want to enlighten our boy?”

Finn looks skeptical about the ‘our boy’ bit, but he does answer the question. “I thought it’d rubbed off of Rey.” He sighs. “Also, you’ve got shit taste in presents for women if you bought it for her.”

Kylo looks appalled and stunned. “She likes it! I like it! It smells good!”

“You smell like my dormmates coming home from rolling around with the Specs all night. Where’d you get that? One of the sex shops in the R&R section of the F-Deck?”

Kylo blushes furiously. Finally he says, _“Finalizer_.”

Poe, more gently, says, “The reason it smells good to you, and Elias, and Critt, and though he’s not going to admit it, Finn, is because it’s not only a collection of pleasant scents, it’s also packed full of female sex pheromones. Which is why they sell it in the sex shops in the R&R section.”

“Then why do you know it?” Ren snipes at Poe.

“Just because I don’t fuck women doesn’t mean I haven’t played a million card games in different pleasure palaces. Trust me, I _know_ that scent, and _all_ of its cousins. And I know why it’s attractive to you.” He glances to the boys. “Speaking of attraction… And why we’ll talk cologne one on one. You’re going to want to find something that works with your personal chemistry, and is, with any luck, a little less readily identifiable than what Ren’s got on,” Poe says with a little smirk. “Anyway, yes, it smells good to you, Kylo, it’s been designed on an atomic level to make you feel good in its presence.”

“And that’s why Rey likes it, too,” Critt says. He glances around because the rest of the table, including Kylo is sort of just staring at him. “What? She mentioned this to the girls last night, and Savarah told me. Rey likes girls, too. So, it smells good, it’s packed full of yummy girl scent, so…” He sniffs at Kylo a little more deeply, and then pulls back. “Yeah, that’s just weird on you. My nose is telling me one thing and my eyes are telling me a different thing.”

Kylo sighs, deeply, and then rolls his eyes a bit. “That cover all of grooming?” he says to Poe.

“I think so.”

“Great, from attraction to desire. You’ll feel it, most of the people around you want to be desired, maybe not by you, personally, but in general, and the ones who do want to be desired by you, tend to enjoy proof of said desire,” Ren says.

“But, since rubbing a hard shaft against someone without their explicit permission is generally considered inappropriate in most social situations, _learn to use your words_ ,” Poe adds. “Which I guess gets us back to walking over and telling people what you want.”

“Or patting your lady on the butt from time to time and just _looking_ at her,” Finn adds. “Especially if she’s feeling a little low, a direct, ‘You’re the most beautiful woman in my universe,’ tends to lift the mood.”

“Lift her… his, I guess, hair, lay a kiss on the nape of the neck, and say something sweet. Rey likes that. I like it when she does it to me.”

Poe’s nodding. “Especially if you’re in a relationship with someone, don’t ever be afraid to tell them what you like about them, and why. That generally makes people happy.” 

The men look at each other, not immediately sure what goes after that.

So, after a moment, Ren says, “Questions?”

The boys look at each other, and at the picture, and at the men, and Ren can feel they want to spend a while talking to each other, and looking up _every_ even nearly dirty word they can think of on their library pads, so…

“Never mind,” Ren says. “Go, have fun. Learn, ask when you’ve got more to go off of.”

Poe adds. “You can always ask. _Hopefully,_ at least one of us will know the answer.”

The boys nod at that, too, and then grab their jackets and hurry off, whispering to each other.

Finn looks to Ren. “We do okay by them?”

Ren nods. “Yeah. They’re feeling good about it.”

Finn gets up. “Good.” He grabs the bottle of rum and adds more to his coffee. He gulps it, figuring that it’s doing an okay job of killing the part of his brain that’s uncomfortable with the boys, so… Maybe it’ll work for Ren, too. One more swallow. “Okay. No bantha shit. Jakku.” It’s not a question, but it is, because…

Because, for a minute at least, Finn’s trying to be not horrified and scared of this man, and he can, almost, sort of, get it.

Sort of.

Poe wants to grin, pleased to see Finn trying, but doesn’t, because… Well, Rey hasn’t exactly told him about Jakku, but given what Ren did about it, and the fact that Poe’s not some sheltered kid out on his first run in the wider world, he’s got a pretty good sense of what’s going on, still… He’s not sure if he should leave for this, but… He notices the way Ren catches his eye, like… maybe this would be easier if he sticks around, so… He pours himself more to drink, and tops up Ren’s cup, too. (Mostly coffee, a little rum. The guy’s the size of a Wookie, but he doesn’t drink from what Poe can see, so… four shots in three hours… probably good.)

Ren nods, and drinks, draining his cup, and then says, “I can look back at it now and _say_ that was a bad decision. And maybe, as more time passes and I do a better job of balancing, I may, begin to _feel_ like it was a bad decision, too, but…” He exhales slowly, feeling that moment when he got hit by Rey’s memory of it. “I felt it in her mind. She didn’t tell me about it. Not until much later. And…” he rubs his lips together, “it’s… different when she tells you, than when you feel it. When she talks, you’ve got her walls, and yours in place, so you can do things like… think.

“But, the Force kept throwing us together. And it has a sense of humor apparently, or… something. Maybe it mattered for her to see the man, with the scars, the big ones she put there, reassurance that she could hurt me, maybe, but, every other time it would connect us, it would pick a moment where I wasn’t particularly dressed.

“The first time she saw me, she was angry, and a little afraid, but mostly angry. Tied up, in my ship, at my mercy, and she was _angry,_ and then confused, and then more angry _._ The next time, I was half-naked, changing after training, and she was on the other side of the galaxy, but she was afraid and disgusted. I’m used to that, so… I don’t think anything about it. Then I’m dressed, and she’s getting comfortable with me. We talk and touch and the galaxy almost spins apart. Half-naked again, and again disgusted. I said something like, ‘It’s just skin, you’ve got it, too,’ and got hit with this… wave…” He bites his lip, hard. “I didn’t see it, because she didn’t see it. Her eyes were closed tight. But for a few heartbeats I felt it… and… She was alone, and afraid, and hungry, and _hurt._ ” Finn and Poe can feel the anger burning through him, the wave of dark around him. “And the men who did it to her,” his voice is shaking with anger, “and the people who didn’t protect her, and the ground they left her crying on, and the dirt her fucking abomination of parents are buried in, their bones, the…” he howls out a word that Finn’s only heard Chewie say once, and he still isn’t brave enough to ask what that one means, “that bought her from them, _all_ of it’s gone, now. Because of _me_.” He sounds very satisfied by that, and both Finn and Poe are very aware of the fact that Ren may be balancing, but he’s still _dark._

Ren swallows. “I wasn’t there to protect her. I couldn’t have been. But I could _avenge_ it. And, yes, revenge is hollow, _after,_ but it’s _fucking amazing_ when you’re doing it.” He’s glowing with the memory of the feel of watching Jakku shatter. “And if there’s anything in this universe I’m _good_ at, it’s breaking shit and hurting people, and being able to turn that against people, things, that hurt her… That was _good._ ”

Finn snorts. “Good.” He shakes his head. “It was a whole planet, Ren!”

Kylo nods. “Small one, but yes. And there were probably a few thousand people on it. Maybe ten thousand, and in all of those years, all of those people, _none_ of them changed her story. Just one of them, in the right place at the right time… Just _one_ getting off his, or her, or their ass to prevent a child from being raped, and everything would have unfolded differently. One person could have saved that whole planet by one fucking act of kindness, but none of them did.”

“Don’t put what you did on them,” Finn says.

“I’m not. It’s on me. It’s _entirely_ on me,” and Finn and Poe again feel the satisfaction that’s still thrumming through Ren at that. A dark purr that’s richly pleased and _very_ dangerous. “But it wouldn’t have been on me if _anyone_ had had enough light or kindness or humanity, or however you like to think about it, to step in and stop a gang rape. And from what she’s said, it’s not like she was the only one, and it’s not like it only happened once.” He’s looking at Finn, really looking. “I read your files. You were officer material. You had perfect or near perfect scores in the training simulations. Any order aimed at you, you followed as close to perfectly as a human can. Phasma had _glowing_ notes about you in your files. She was grooming you to be her eventual second-in-command. But once there were actual, real, people around you, you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t kill civilians for me. You connected enough, with them, in a matter of minutes, to feel that they were _people,_ break the hardest mental conditioning in the galaxy, and disobey direct orders _._ Not a single fucking person on Jakku did that for Rey. NOT ONE! They didn’t even share fucking food with her. We’d been together for a few weeks, and I realize she doesn’t actually know how to use a godsdamned fork, because not a single person on that fucking planet took the time to teach her, or feed her a fucking meal that needed one. Not one. Not one in fifteen… eighteen… twenty years? We don’t know, because _no one_ on that rock bothered to tell her her birthday!” The cups of coffee and everything else that isn’t attached to the floor in Poe’s ship rattles as Kylo says that.

Poe lays his hand on Ren’s wrist, and Ren nods, making himself calm down. He nods and takes a deep breath. “I grew up with people who tried. They failed. They couldn’t… rescue me. But they tried. No one tried for Rey. So, yeah, a _whole planet_. _I cleansed the universe of that filth._ And I wouldn’t do it now. I’d probably stick recruiting centers on it, take the people who want to go and likely any child, and get them out of there, and then blow it up, but… I didn’t learn about it, _now._ I learned about it, _then._ ”

They’re all quiet after that. 

Finn takes another drink, and then says, quietly, “Okay. You asked me to try some empathy. Now, I want you to. You have a friend, and you love her, dearly. There are five people in the universe you call family, and she’s one of them. But, her family fucked up. They screwed her over, left her in the middle of nowhere, and bad shit happened to her.

“And there’s this guy, and she says she loves him, and… I can see it, she thinks it’s real, but… Based on what? The family she never had? The” he mimics Ren’s term for Plutt, “who bought her? The day and a half with your dad where he was basically decent to us, but that was it? I mean, I’m not saying that I know what it is to love, or that I’ve got any great role models for it, but Rose did, and I can talk to,” he nods to Poe, “and Chewie about what it means to love someone, and… So, yeah, I’m flying without a map, but not blind.

“But, she’s got nothing to go off of, and this guy of hers, he’s _fucking dangerous._ ” And if it weren’t for how earnest Finn’s being, Ren would have his hackles up, but he can feel this. This is deeper than Finn’s own issues with him, and is well into his justified concerns for his friend. _“_ And just for kicks and giggles, we know he’s got the kind of magic that can warp people’s minds. We know he can do things like make people forget who he is and what he’s done. And we know he’s not exactly good at controlling himself. Just being near him sets my alarms off, and it’s not like I don’t have good reason for it. You are not some harmless little lamb who got a bad rep by accident or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being afraid of you is _not_ unreasonable.”

Kylo just blinks at that.

“And sure, maybe the greebles in your head are gone now, or at least calmed down. And yes, it’s clear you got the shit end of the childhood stick, too, and I am genuinely sorry for what Snoke did to you. And yes, I can feel that you, as best as you know how to, love her. Like Jacen would say, 'It’s obvious if you look,' but, just like with Rey, what map are you using? The parents who didn’t save you? The ‘grandfather’ who wasn’t? Would you actually know love if it walked up and bit you in the ass?

“And maybe you’re balancing. But… What the fuck are you going to do if something goes wrong? Really wrong? It’s abundantly clear that the little voice most of the rest of us have, that says, ‘Back the fuck up and turn around, this is _wrong!’ is not in your head_.

“If she tries to leave you? Or if any of the probably billion people out there who have a reason, a real, personal reason, to want you dead or in pain, go after her? The Kennas show up next week with a pile of guns and bombard the place rather than see Critt turn into another version of you. What happens?

“Am I going to lose my friend because she’s _near_ you?

“What the fuck am I supposed to do if she gets caught in the crossfire of someone aiming for you? Or if some new dark fucker pops up and starts using you as a puppet again? Or if you just get bored of her? Or if you can’t, actually, balance? Or something goes wrong and pushes you over the edge again?

“So, _Master,_ help me out. Tell me what you’d do if it were your dear friend who brought this guy home.”

Kylo closes his eyes, and swallows, and chews on his lips some, looks at his empty cup, takes a gulp of Poe’s, which is straight rum at this point, and fidgets with the cup for a bit before saying, “I used to have nightmares every night.” He fiddles with the cup some more. “No, I didn’t. Because I could and usually did go a few days at a time without sleeping. I used to have nightmares every time I slept. I don’t, not any more. These days, I can go weeks, sometimes months, without them. But when I do… It’s what you’re talking about. That I’m not stable enough for her. That I’ll get bored, and if not of her, then of this… thing I’m doing. That I’ll turn into Palpatine and start blowing shit up just for kicks. And then she’ll turn on me, because she can’t abide that. That any of the billion people out there who want me dead will strike at her. That one day I’ll reach out, and she’ll just be gone.

“I wake up with my heart pounding and body in a cold sweat, and some nights I can’t shut it off, so I get up, grab one of my datapads and work, or go to the gym and fight the training droids. And some nights I roll over and hold close to her, and just touching her calms me down.

“Some nights I pray. I used to do that every night, then… not for a long time… but it’s coming back. It’s difficult to trust in the Force when you’ve got my history with it. But the Force brought me Rey, so… I’m giving it another chance.

“And I think about my dad, who literally let me kill him, so I could get to this spot.” Kylo bites his lip again, sniffs, makes his voice stabilize. “What do I know about love? He died for me. You saw it, right? He _literally_ died for me. The last thing I said to him… before… was, ‘Help me…’” Kylo’s lip is trembling as he says this. “And he did. For the chance that it would help. And he didn’t know if it would, but he did it anyway, just on the hope that it would. And it did.” He takes a deep, centering breath, and another sip of Poe’s drink.

“And I think about the children we don’t yet have, and, you’ll either laugh or be horrified, but Paige, too. And the rest of this pile of children we seem to have collected. About the idea of a future, for them, and what and who they’re going to need to have the kind of future where they can go and do or be anything they want to do or be.

“I think about Jon, and if you could get over him having been a First Order officer, you might like him. Poe does, because he’s a really good guy, and how when his husband was killed, how he had a very long conversation with his blaster, and how, in the end, he couldn’t turn it on himself, because he’d been loved, truly loved, and if he loved his man back, he couldn’t betray that love by hurting himself.

“I think about the vows I’ve made to her, and the ones I’ve made to myself, and who I have to be to keep them… Like you said, how we get there may shift, but the goal doesn’t. And sometimes the sun comes up and I’m still awake, and sometimes I’m back to sleep by then, but…

“According to my mom, I was named for hope. And that’s all I’ve got, hope.” He takes another sip of Poe’s rum. “And I don’t enjoy you being scared of me, and scared of me for her, and it sets me off, because a lot of people who didn’t have a good reason to be afraid of me were, and it feels a lot like that, but I know it’s not, and your fears are reasonable.”

Finn nods slowly. And then he stands up. He knows this is a problem that can’t be solved by anything but time. “Fair enough. Anyway, it’s late, and I want some time with my woman.” He pulls on his scarf and coat, and heads off.

Kylo’s about to stand, too, when Poe says to him, voice deceptively mild, “See, when I asked you if Jon was okay, that bit about the blaster is the sort of thing that should result in yelling at the top of your lungs NO!”

Kylo shakes his head. “It was… right after. Before I knew him. He’s not… I’d feel it if that was part of now.”

“Okay.” They sit there, quiet, and for them, very relaxed. Then Poe says, voice low, “If it looks like you’re going wrong, we’ll take care of it, before it’s a big problem. Fast and easy, and you won’t see it coming, she won’t either.”

“Thanks.” He twists his cup. “Make sure of that. If I have even a hint of it coming, you won’t succeed. I’ve taken out more than twenty-three coup attempts since I took over, so I’m not kidding about that. Uh... When you shot at me. I could feel you aiming. That's how I stopped the bolt.

"That’s how I was able to take Snoke. Did it on a whim, less than five minutes after I knew I was going to. Use a droid or a mech or something. I can’t feel them because they don’t have feelings. And for her sake, make it look like an accident.”

Poe waves that off. Between him and Finn, he figures they’ve got enough tech to seal up whatever room Kylo’s in and space the atmo. Give it an hour, and that’ll be it.

Kylo shakes his head. “ _I can teleport_. And even if I couldn’t, I can slow my respiration down so low I barely need to breathe. I can probably spend a week in a sealed room and pop right back up after. That’s not going to do it.”

“Noted,” Poe says. “You got any other neat tricks?” For the first time, Kylo’s really seeing the fighter under the scoundrel.

“Not as of yet. Have you… done things like that before?”

Poe grins, a little. “I was on your mom’s security detail. It was part of my job to make sure other people didn’t do stuff like that to her. Best way to do it is to come up with every plan they could try, and then make sure they don’t. Trust me, you won’t see me coming.”

“Good.”

Poe clamps a hand on his shoulder. “Okay, home with you now, too. Go get some sleep, and no nightmares, we’ll take care of you if need be.”

Kylo snorts a laugh, stands up, overbalances, ends up on his ass again, then slowly, carefully gets up, and then says, “That’s bizarrely reassuring, you know?”

Poe laughs at that, too. “Go to bed, get your snuggle on, and balance some.”

“’Night, Poe.”

 


	33. The Talk: Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All righty, loves, here it is, the last of my smut-o-rama rendering binge before summer began. So, uh... yeah, this is not a go read it with the kiddos nearby sort of chapter. ;)

2/16/2

 

“How’d it go?” Rey asks as Kylo, very carefully, walks into their living room, then she looks up from her datapad, and sees exactly how carefully he’s placing his feet, and his current laser focus on the floor so his feet end up where he’s trying to put them. “Are you drunk?”

He continues to, very carefully, he wasn’t feeling it much when they were talking, but he’s certainly feeling it now, walk over to Rey. “Poe says male bonding rituals work better with alcohol.” He sits down next to her, and once safely in their chair, in no danger of tripping, he sprawls out.

Rey tries to brush him off, get the worst of the snow off of him, before he melts all over her. “You’re covered in snow.”

“Walking home took longer than normal.”

“Why didn’t you port?”

He blinks. Right, he can _port._ “Because I’m drunk?”

She gets up, and he sags into the spot where she was. A moment later, she’s got a big cup of water. He takes it and drinks it down, fast. “Probably two or three more or them before I go to sleep.” She gets another one and he sips it.

“So, was it a good ‘bonding’ experience?” He can feel her light slipping through him, mitigating some of the damage he just did to himself.

Kylo nods, eyes closed, world spinning slightly on the other side of his eyelids. “I think so. At the very least, alcohol kills the part of your brain that knows when to stop talking, so… the kids got some… un-censored advice.”

 

 

“Like what?”

“Like Poe once slept with a guy who was flexible enough to fuck and suck him at once? And, apparently, there’s at least one thing Finn and I agree on.”

“What?” Rey asks with a smile.

He giggles. “We both like the view when you’re on top.”

Rey’s laughing at that. “So, he appreciates the jiggling, too.”

“Yeah.” Kylo keeps thinking. “And… uh… that little thing,” he mimics the finger motion he uses to play with it on her, “on the inside, that really likes to get touched, that’s a prostate.”

“So, you learned some things, too.”

“I learned some things, too. My vocabulary is expanding.” He’s looking up at her, a bit bleary and goofy. “Shag, spend, canoodle, get off, come…”

Rey giggles, and starts to pull off his boots. “And you like that.”

“I like that.”

“I got one last night. Forgot to mention it. A muff is a tube of fabric, often with a fur lining, that you put your hand in to keep them warm.”

It takes him a minute to figure out why she’s mentioned that, but when he does, he starts to laugh, rich and long. Then he’s quiet, just laying back in the chair, enjoying this, and her trying to get him out of his wet trousers. “This is good.”

“Me taking your wet things off?”

“Yeah. You caring enough to do it. You caring… You…” He looks up at her, big dopey smile on his face. “When I was walking home, I was thinking…”

She raises an eyebrow at him, crossing to their bedroom to grab one of the blankets. Right now he’s just too big and limp to really pull him out of his wet clothing, so she’ll just wrap him up to keep the chill off.

When she’s back, and got him cocooned, she say, “Thinking what?”

“About sex… I know, you’re shocked.” He smiles again. “Elias is just starting out, rolling around and feeling with Magiit. Critt and Savarah are exploring each other. And Finn waited for Rose… And, apparently Poe had a sweetie once upon a time… And, I wish I’d learned it with you. I wish… the first hand that touched me, the first time I spurted with someone else, the first time a mouth closed on me… I wish I had been naked, and in bed or on a beach or in a pool, and wrapped in you.”

She cuddles in close to him. “Me, too.” She can feel some of his darker experiences, and she wished he hadn’t had them, too. She certainly wouldn’t think twice about trading hers for learning it with him.

He kisses the top of her hair. “And I wish we’d had something like a normal life, so I could have met you… Somewhere safe. Where I could have taken notice of you because you were warm and beautiful and lovely and you, not just because I felt the map in your head. And I wish I got to Jakku a decade earlier, and gotten you out of there.

“And I wish the first time you’d seen me naked, it would have made you happy. And I wish the first time you’d seen me naked, I’d have been happy.

“And I wish Luke had found you, and brought you to us, and maybe we’d have been thrown out of the Jedi for getting too attached, but we’d have been safe and together and… I don’t know, flying around in the _Falcon_ with my Dad and Chewie and running goods from one end of the galaxy to the other. Or maybe you’d be a mechanic somewhere, and I’d be taking her out for maintenance, and I’d see you, working away, and swagger up to you, smile, and say something like, ‘Hey beautiful. Can I buy you dinner…” he grins at her, “and breakfast, every day for the rest of our lives?”

That makes her smile. “Ambitious.”

“According to Poe, there’s something to be said for swaggering over and telling someone exactly what you want.”

She laughs a little, at that.

“And I wish the first time a man touched you, it was me, or if not me, then at least someone you wanted to touch you.

“And I wish I could have given you someone unbroken, not covered in scars. Someone whole.”

“Okay, we’re stopping this now. We’ve gone from nice fantasies to something… Something I don’t like.” She holds his face in her hands. “If I’d wanted a smooth and easy light sider, I could have had one.”

“Could you? Finn asked me what would happen if things went wrong and you wanted to leave…”

“Stop. Now.” She sighs at that. And mentally whaps Finn upside the back of the head with her staff. The last thing she needs is Kylo thinking things like this.

“Sorry… Hard to control, the good and the bad, when I’m drunk.”

“How much did you have?”

“I don’t know. Poe was pouring. At least two shots, maybe four? I drank the last cup fast.” Then he squints in memory. “Then I drank half of Poe’s. Might have had a half-decent conversation with Finn though, so… That’s something.” His eyes close for a moment, and he’s just quiet on the chair next to her.

She can feel his thoughts whirling, mostly in directions she doesn’t want him going. Time to nudge them.

She hits him with a mental image of her, in brown coveralls, her hair back in a kerchief, deep in the gizzards of the Falcon, working on something, when he comes up to her.

His eyes don’t open, but he smiles. Kylo knows what she’s doing, re-centering him on something positive. Playing instead of dwelling.

He mentally leans against one of the side walls, enjoying the view of the back of her, her ass cupped in her coveralls, her arms as she reaches out, and then says to her, “Hey, beautiful. How about I buy you dinner?”

She turns, looks at him, her eyes flicking from his hair to his boots. He’s in his Padme clothing, blaster on his hip, no lightsaber, period. Her eyebrow raises at him.

“And breakfast,” he says with a grin. “For the rest of our lives?”

She smirks at that, and then laughs. “Let’s see how dinner goes.” She looks him up and down again. “I eat a lot, you got credits for that?”

He smirks at her. “I’ve got my tricks.”

She pulls herself out of the innards of the _Falcon_ , and heads up to him, extending her hand. “I don’t eat with strangers. What’s your name?”

He’s still grinning as he takes her hand in his. “Kylo.”

“Just Kylo?” He still hasn’t let go, and she hasn’t pulled back.

“Kylo Amidala. Though the old fart who owns this bucket calls me Ben.”

She sniggers at that. “Uh huh. And why would that be?”

“Because that’s what he and my mom named me. How about you? What’s your name?”

“Rey.”

“Just Rey?” His index finger is slipping over the back of her hand.

“Just Rey, unless you’re serious about forever.”

He lifts her hand to his lips. “I am.”

He’s in a much better mood when they pull out of the fantasy play. She looks around their home, feeling him in her arms, and close. “You know, we could do something like that.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You mean, not just think about it?”

“Yeah.” She kisses his chin. “Day after tomorrow. I’ll be on the F deck, 3rd subsection. Come find me, Amidala.”

He smiles at that. “I can do that.”

 

 

* * *

2/18/2

He could find her the easy way. Could just focus, port, and be by her side in a moment, but that’s… probably defeating the purpose of the game.

Two strangers. Two _normal_ strangers, who just… like the look of each other, or something like that. However, it works for normal people. He’s a little fuzzy on that. And though finding Jon and asking how this works is tempting, he’s thinking that how to go about meeting strangers to have sex with them is likely a skill he’s not actually going to need.

So, in his really off-duty wear, his not even remotely black at all Padme clothing, he wanders the F-Deck, just… strolling, keeping an eye out, looking for her. He’s got his _do not recognize_ spell up, not wanting to deal with being Master Ren, not now.

Just… Kylo Amidala, a trader here for a deal maybe, walking around, looking for someone to spend a pleasant meal with, and if things go really well, maybe share his bed, and if it’s even better, then maybe breakfast, and the rest of their lives will be in the offing.

Maybe.

He’s not sure if normal guys feel that way when they’re out looking for a good time.

He senses her before he sees her, but that’s normal, for them. A few more paces, and he can see the bench she’s sitting at, near the squammath courts, she’s half-watching a game, half-reading.

She skipped her usual Mistress of the Maji clothing. He smiles again. She’s got on a dress. Light and loose and he can see her legs. It’s simpler, and, to his mind at least, a lot sexier than her usual Mistress of the Maji clothing.

Apparently, to the minds of a few other men as well. He notices a few of them notice her, and one wanders closer, sits on the bench next to Rey, and Kylo watches, smirk on his face, as he attempts to strike up conversation. He can’t hear what she’s saying, he’s not close enough for that, but he can feel it. _This seat is taken._

The man leans a little closer, looking like he’s going to try pressing his luck, but Rey looks up at him, makes eye contact, and he suddenly jumps up and _leaves._

Kylo smirks at that. He drifts a bit closer, still watching her. She’s just reading now.

He’s not sure what to do next. He’s probably about three meters off, just looking at her, feeling a little stupid, because, sure, Poe’s swagger on over technique is probably great and all, but he just… Can’t.

That’s not who he is. And, apparently, that’s not who Kylo Amidala is, either.

Her eyes leave the page, and catch his, and a slight smile lights her lips. He’s almost blushing, getting caught staring, and he’s not sure if that means he’s too damn far into the fantasy of this, or it’s just too silly of a game, but…

“You’re staring.” Her voice is a little sharper than normal, but not unkind.

He nods, and after a moment comes up with something to say, “Intentionally. You’re worth staring at.”

She inclines her head a little. And he realizes she’s gesturing to the bench, so he sits next to her. “Like I said to the last bloke, this seat’s taken. So, don’t make me a liar, eh?”

He grins at that, sitting next to her. “Never. I’m Kylo.”

“Hello Kylo, I’m Rey.” Her datapad’s on her lap, page still up.

“Good book?” he asks.

“Useful book. I’m not sure if it’s good.”

“How does that work?”

“It’s the most boring writing I’ve ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on, but it’s a topic I need to know more about, so…”

“Ah… Yeah. I did a lot of that sort of reading when I was at school.”

“What was a boring but useful topic for you?”

“Uh…” Kylo tries to think. He remembers being bored, but the useful part... “Anything about disciplining myself. It’s much easier to just do than it is to _read_ and then do. How about you, what’s boring but useful?”

“I’m reading about formal modes of address.”

“Are you a diplomat then?”

“Not today.” She smiles a bit at that and shuts off the datapad. He scoots a little closer to her. “You?”

“Today, I’m a pilot, off-duty.”

“And tomorrow?”

“We’ll find out then,” he says with a little smile. She leans in towards him, watching his lips and eyes. He’s enjoying the attention, a lot. “Do you spend a lot of time here?”

“Some. Not a lot,” she says.

“This is my…” He’s thinking, how many times has he been up here? Three? Four? More, the correct answer should be more. “Fourth time here. You come here often enough to have a favorite place to eat?”

“Not yet.”

He looks around at the carts and counter service cafes. He knows neither of them have ever attempted to eat a meal in one of them. “Well, in that case, is there anywhere you want to try?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s almost dinnertime, and I’d like to eat it with you.”

“Then I suppose I can find somewhere with something I’d like to try.”

He stands up, and offers her his hand. She reaches out, fast, easy, and just takes it, because normal people, doing a normal thing, like just meeting each other, don’t hesitate for a week, tentative fingers creeping ever closer before barely brushing skin on skin. He gives her a little tug, and she’s standing, too close, sweetly close, and her hand is in his, and it still feels so _right_ there.

He rubs his lips together, and then says, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but tomorrow, I’m going to be yours.”

“That long from now?” she’s smiling up at him.

“Nah,” he’s grinning down, and she’s on her toes, kissing him, and this is the most successful ‘first meeting’ ever, likely because it’s the millionth time they’ve done this, but… Maybe… If things had been different… It could have been.

 

 

One of his hands is in her hair, and the other’s at the small of her back, and her arms are around his waist and neck, and it’s just _right._

 _So much for pretending we just met._ He thinks to her.

 _Hush. This is good._ She thinks back.

He nips her bottom lip, pulling back to rest his forehead against hers, both of them with closed eyes, just feeling each other. Then he says, out loud, “It really is.” _Dinner or bed or dinner in bed?_

_Take me out. Tease me some. Then bed._

“I can do that.”

 

 

* * *

They pick a noodle shop, mostly based on the long line of people in front of it. If lots of people want what they’re selling, that’s got to be good, right?

Whatever it is they do, it’s fast. There’s a good fifty people in line in front of them, but they still get up to the counter in less than ten minutes.

The people around them order in numbers. “I’ll have a five and seven to go.” Or “Three and six, here.”

Kylo glances at her as they get within speaking range. Eyebrow raised.

“I’m hungry, Amidala.”

He nods. And then looks to the clerk. “Five, three, and seven, for here.”

Rey’s smirking at him. “You have no idea what you just ordered do you?”

“Nope, but you don’t either, so it’ll be an adventure.”

She smiles up at him. “I like adventures.”

 

* * *

And while she might like adventure, she, and he for that matter, don’t like three. It’s… got to be some sort of noodle with what appears to be a protein of some variety, but all of it’s swimming in a broth so blisteringly hot that Kylo doesn’t even bother to put it in his mouth, and Rey only lets it barely touch the tip of her tongue before putting the rest of it back in the bowl, and wiping her chopsticks off.

Five and seven are good though, again, even after eating them, neither of them know what they are. Filling, warm, and tasty. That’s what they are.

Of course, most of the fun of eating goes hand in hand with Rey’s _tease me._

Kylo’s not entirely sure where to start with that, but he’s game to try.

“So, my diplomat, you ever get a chance to swim?”

She raises a brow.

“Pools are rare. I know that. Most ships have sonics, or maybe showers, but something you can actually stretch out and float in… They’re _rare._ ”

“I actually don’t know how to swim. I can float. And a friend of mine has promised to teach me when home warms up enough for the water to not be ice, but…”

He gives her a little look, because he hasn’t actually done that, but likely should. Or… wait, maybe she’s talking about Poe or Finn. Well, he’s bloody well going to teach her to swim, now. He cares fuck all for the fact that Poe doesn't like women and Finn's beyond happily married, if anyone is going to get to play with a wet, naked Rey teaching her how to swim, it's going to be  _him._ “Well, I don’t have anything big enough to do laps in, or anything like that, but… If you’d like to do some floating…”

“You know a place.”

He grins. “I know a place.”

“I don’t have a swimming costume.”

“Not necessary.” He grins at her, wider, eyes dropping to trace over her body, imagining what’s under her clothing.

“So, this is either a very private sort of place, or an extremely relaxed one.”

“It’s a very private, and hopefully very relaxing one.”

“Uh huh. And do you have a swim costume?”

He shakes his head. “Never understood the point of them. It’s one thing if the water is cold and your costume keeps it off you, but I know the water’s warm.”

She giggles a little at that. “Are you trying to get me naked?”

“Yes, very much.” He grins at her, wide and easy. “Is there any chance of you saying yes?”

She grins back at him. “There’s always a chance.”

 

* * *

Three bowls would have been enough to be very comfortably full.

Two is not quite enough.

It’s Rey who decides to up the ante on the 'tease me' front. One of the carts sells frozen fruit mush concoctions. Popsicle. The word on the side of the cart is Popsicle. All sorts of different flavors, in many bright colors. If that had been all there was to it, she would have kept walking by, but there was a picture next to the word Popsicle. Apparently, Popsicle are long, frozen oblongs on a stick.

The kind of thing you’ve got to lick and suck to eat.

She gets a myrsh melon one. It’s a warm pinky-red color. And once she’s got it, and starts to lick it, every thought not solely related to getting Rey off the F-Deck and into his bed goes galloping out of Kylo’s head.

She slips the top six centimeters into her mouth sucking it, making small mmmm noises, as she pulls the oblong out from between her lips. The heat of her mouth melted the mush just a little, so it’s wet and shiny, slipping into and out of her mouth.

She holds it out to Kylo. “Want a lick?”

 

 

He swallows hard, looking at her lips, pink from the juice of the oblong. “More than you can possibly imagine.” He doesn’t move toward the dessert, and it’s clear he understood how she meant the question.

She returns the dessert to her own mouth, lightly flicking her tongue over the tip of the confection.

Kylo’s eyes shut, and he grits his teeth.

When he opens them, she’s… fellating the Popsicle. There’s just no other word for what she’s doing to it.

“You’re killing me.”

“You’re enjoying it.”

He shifts again, making a mental note to get a long fucking coat to go with his casual wear, gently takes her hand, removing the Popsicle from her mouth, and eating it, very fast.

 

 

“Kylo!”

“There’s only so much teasing a man can take.”

“Light weight.”

“I promise, when we’re in private, you can tease me as long as you like, but this isn’t the place for it.”

Her eyes light with mischief. “Really?”

He bends closer, his lips cool and red, and just barely brushes them against her ear as he says, “Please.”

Rey smiles up at him, open and wide. “Take me somewhere private.”

Kylo’s never, ever been so tempted to port in public than he is right now, but… People might be looking. So, he offers her his arm, and she snugs up against him, and they walk to the elevator, which as soon as the doors shut, leaving them alone, he ports them out of.

 

* * *

When they’re in the courtyard, Rey says, “Breaking character?”

Kylo smirks. “Kylo Amidala has myriad talents, apparently.”

“Kylo Amidala really wants to get shagged.”

“That, too," he says, and she laughs at that.

“Are we still playing?” she asks.

“I was having fun, so if you were, yeah, I’d like to.”

“Okay, Amidala, show me your pool.”

He gestures to the door to his office. “On the other side of that door is my office, and behind that is my room. It’s in there.”

 

 

* * *

“You actually have a pool!” Rey says to him as soon as they’re in his room.

“Why would I lie about that?”

“This ship doesn’t seem like the kind of place that has a lot of pools.”

He shrugs. “Well, maybe I might have… left something out about the whole pilot bit. I can and do fly a ship, but…”

“I noticed the courtyard and office. You’re a big deal here, aren’t you?”

He shrugs a little, dismissively. “Kind of. Do you want to know?”

“Tonight,” she shakes her head. “You’re Kylo and I’m Rey, and that’s enough.”

He pulls her close to him. “It really is.” His lips are hovering above hers, and his eyes are warm on hers, and he licks his lips, tongue tracing slowly over them before saying, “Do you want a swim, or… shall we get naked and play first, then get a soak?”

“Oo… Options.” She reaches up, gently brushes her nose against his, and then closes the gap between their lips.

It’s good kiss, warm and pleased. Settled. That wasn’t there the first time they did this. There’s no electric uncertainty.

There was a heartbeat when his body first brushed against hers in the pool only a few meters from them, all those months ago, unsure, afraid she was going to blink out of existence, electric from hair to toes on the anticipation. All of it coursed through his synapses, lighting his skin from scalp to toes. Then it was her skin, wet on his, and then he was reaching for her, pulling her up, her lips against his and the… no words. There just aren’t words for that moment of the first time her lips touched his.

There are words now. Part of it is just he’s not so touch starved his brain whites out at the smallest physical affection. Now, he can think and revel, and feel her on him. Now, he knows that little sigh, and the quiver of her body seeking his, and the way her body cups his, and his hands find their familiar places on her head and back…

Settled.

 

* * *

Heat. That’s the same. He still burns for her. Maybe burns deeper if not quite so wild. The flush of heat at her skin on his, the fire flicking through his senses as she melds to him.

That was there at the first kiss.

Was there in the longing for the first touch.

In the way his hands shook has he began to ease his gloves off, wondering if they’d actually make contact.

And it’s here now, in his touch and hers, as his hands slip under her skirt, and her hand brushes his face.

 

 

* * *

He’s holding her close, kissing her ear, feeling good all over, as she’s pulling his shirt up, fingers splayed on his back. Then she says to him, “You know, Amidala, for all your moves, I get the feeling you’ve never done this before.”

 

 

He pulls back, staring at her, eyes wide. He swallows, realizing what level of game she’s opening up to him. No, they can’t change the past, or kill it, really, but they can at least pretend, and, he swallows again, loving her and this and the chance to do it _right_ and… He licks his lips. “What gave it away?”

“Nothing. Just a sense I had.”

He blushes a little, fully throwing himself into the game, into the idea that this is his first chance, first time, first day meeting this glorious woman and he’s got her all to himself and… “It’s not embarrassing, is it?”

“Why would it be?”

“I’m thirty-three?”

She shrugs, and kisses him. “I’m not embarrassed by it, so I don’t think you should be.”

“Is it yours?” he’s laying the game back at her, letting her feel that any answer she wants to give here is just fine with him. He’ll roll with any of them.

“It’s my first time with you, and that’s all that matters.”

He smiles at her, and kisses her, and says, “I suppose so. Just, tell me what you like. I can’t read minds, so _tell me_.”

She grins. “You like hearing words?”

“I do when they’re coming out of your mouth.”

“Then I’ll talk. Though right now, I’d rather be kissing.”

And Kylo can get on board with that. 

 

 

* * *

“I think I’d like you naked.” Rey’s hands are under Kylo’s shirt, her body pressed flush to his, as they kiss.

He pulls back a little from their kiss, grinning at her. “I really liked the sound of that.”

She’s down to her bra and panties. He steps back a little, pulling off his shirt and tossing it aside.

The first time the real Rey saw him without a shirt, she glanced for a tenth of a second, just about swallowed her tongue, and then looked away, blushing.

The first time the real Rey saw him without a shirt, his back was to her, and he knew what she was about to see, too big, too angular, too pale, too many scars. He was rubbing his thumb and middle finger together, cursing the Force for linking them _now,_ quieting that, forcing himself to calm. He’d never get the map if he scared her off. And then he turned around.

She asked him to put on a cowl or something, and at the time he was sure that was disgust. Now, he knows that was _part_ of what was going on, but not _all_ of it.

This time, she’s not blushing. She’s smiling at him, eyes trailing over his skin. This time, she’s enjoying.

“Oh, you’re a treat under all that clothing, aren’t you?”

He flushes at the sound of that, shaft getting even harder, begging to be released so she can appreciate it, too.

She steps a little closer, trailing her fingers from his clavicle to the fine line of hairs on his belly. “I bet these lead somewhere fun.”

His mouth feels dry, and his shaft too big for his trousers, and all of his attention is on her finger, and the spot just below it, where he’s fumbling with his belt, trying to get out of his clothing.

The buckle clangs against the metal of his floor when he pulls his belt out of his trousers and drops it on the floor. The top button and zip take a few more seconds, and then he’s shucking his trousers and his shorts.

He’s standing naked in front of her, save for his socks, and she’s _beaming_ at him. “Force, you’re lovely.” She gently nudges him back to the bed. “And we are going to have such a good time.”

 

* * *

Most of the time Kylo doesn’t feel a lack from not having any sort of artistic outlet in his current life. Of course, in his past life, his art of choice was calligraphy, and, right now, calligraphy doesn’t feel like the kind of art he’d need for this. If he could compose poetry as well as put it on a page in an aesthetically pleasing way, he’d have something he could use to capture this feeling.

But he doesn’t.

But it does feel like there should be entire branches of art dedicated to celebrating Rey getting naked. The way she looks, the curve of belly, buttock, and breast. The sway of her hair, and the way she gracefully drops each piece of clothing. The way her doing this makes him feel.

It makes him want to sing or draw or… something.

He settles for watching her, for projecting the sensation of it, and saying to her, “You are _so fucking beautiful._ ”

 

* * *

She’s on the bed with him, her body straddling his, not really touching, not yet. He traces his hand over her cheek, and down her neck, feeling goosebumps raise. He lightly, with just the tips of his fingernails trails across her chest. That gets a happy moan. (He makes a mental note that, if, at some point, he and Finn ever have the sort of relationship where they can actually talk about this stuff, to thank him for that tip, because Rey really likes it.) He stops that path with his fingers just above her breast. “May I?”

“Please.” She gestures to the head of the bed. “How about you sit up? You’ll be able to see and touch easier.”

He does, sitting up, scooting back, and she follows, then glances at his lap, and his very hard, very high shaft. “Can I sit in your lap?”

He nods, vehemently.

“You’ll tell me if it’s too much, right?”

He grins at her, breaking character for a moment. “Even Virgin Kylo didn’t spurt from that.”

“Virgin Kylo had a naked girl in his lap while licking and stroking her breasts?”

“Maybe?” He flashes her a lightly naughty, slightly mischievous look. He hasn’t told her that story, and he’s not sure if that counted as Virgin Kylo, though, he supposes by the rules he was raised with, that was technically true. It was the first time he had the kind of sex that could make a baby, so… In an Obi Wan sort of way, that was Virgin Kylo. In a, how-Kylo-himself thinks of it way, that was one of a very tiny handful of good times he had when we was still under Snoke’s command.

It’s clear Rey’s curious about that. It’s also clear she’s not going to ask, now. “Well, Rey the Diplomat is being careful. Don’t want things to end too soon.”

“I’m sure Virgin Kylo can figure out what to do with his tongue if his shaft goes off too soon.” He licks it slowly, easily over her lower lip. “Or better yet, Rey the Diplomat can show him _exactly_ what she likes, and tell him all of her sexy little tricks.”

Rey laughs at that, kisses him, wet and deep, and then settles into his lap. “Touch me?”

“Yes!”

 

* * *

She’s in his lap, snug up against him, her pearl nestled at the base of his shaft, so every time she squirms a bit both of them get a treat.

And right now, Rey’s very squirmy.

And Kylo’s enjoying it immensely.

“So…” His hand is just, barely, a hair and a half’s breadth away from the skin of her bosom.

“Soft and easy to start. They’re sensitive.”

 

 

He makes contact, his fingers spanning her ribcage to her back, the palm of his hand cupping her bosom, drawing it higher up, and his thumb, lightly, so lightly rubbing back and forth over her nipple.

Rey makes a pleased sound.

“Is it good?”

She wriggles a bit more, and he feels her skin slick on his, slipping just a bit. “It’s good. Maybe… thumb and forefinger, don’t pinch, but…” She shakes her head, and then gently reaches for his nipple, drawing her thumb and forefinger over it. Not a pinch, not hard enough for that, but a similar sort of motion. “Like that.”

“I can do that,” and he does. His left hand gets into the game. “How about…” He cups her whole breast in his hand and gently squeezes, pulling his fingers up toward each other, all five meeting at her nipple, to glide back down again.

Rey rocks against him a bit harder, lifting up a little higher, the wet of her body slicking down on his. “Can you feel how much I like that.”

He nods, swallows hard. “Yeah.” His hips rock, too, his body hard, hot, pressed against her belly. “Feel how much I like that?”

“Oh yeah.” She kisses him, as he plays with her breasts, lips and tongue and fingers and wet and dry, soft and then sharp. She fists her hand in his hair, pulling back swift, but not too hard. Kylo gasps, grip stuttering, eyes slipping shut, shaft jerking. Her lips caress over his. “That good, too?”

“It really is.” His hands leave her bosom, and settle under her ass, letting her know to lift up some. She does, and his lips find her nipple. “Keep talking to me. Tell me it’s good. Tell me you love it.”

She’s cradling his head, keeping him close, stroking his hair. “It’s better than good. It’s soft and wet… And… I feel it in my breast, but… not just there. You lick and suck and… I don’t feel the sensation in my maomao, but I feel the pleasure of it there.”

 

 

She’s high enough up that she can rub her delta against his tip, and she does, wet and slick. “I feel it under your lips, and I feel it there, and” he sucks a little harder, “Just like that, baby. Just…” He does it again, and again, “like that. It makes your shaft on my skin feel even better.”

He groans a bit at that, and she can’t feel the vibrations of it, but she can feel the intention behind it. Behind a lot of this. Desire. Being desired. A first time of joy and love and acceptance, and…

She pulls his face away, so he’s looking up at her. “You make me feel so good.” She strokes his face, and over the line of his scar, across his lips. “Can I make you feel good?”

He nods. “Please. I want…” He licks his lips, and she follows his tongue with hers.

“Lay down.” Them sitting up like that is a shallower position than him lying down. And for this, Rey wants every millimeter of his shaft to glide into and through her.

He does, kissing her breasts as he eases himself below her, laying on his back, looking eager, pleased, ready.

Rey scoots down a bit, too, so she’s straddling his lap. As she starts to ease down his body, she’s moaning, loudly at the slick stretch and easy glide of his skin on hers. 

He’s being very still, very quiet, looking up at her. _Feeling it._

 

 

* * *

“Do you like it?”

Does he _like it?_ Newly divested of his virginity Kylo Amidala likes this. He likes this just fine. He’s having a _very_ good time with a pleasant stranger who he hopes will one day be vastly more than just a pleasant stranger.

On day one, minute one, of his next great adventure, Kylo Amidala likes this.

Kylo Ren, doesn’t _like it._

In his home, with his wife, and the life he’s building with and for her. No, he doesn’t _like_ this.

“No.”

For a heartbeat Rey’s confused, then she catches where he’s going with this.

He’s fairly still right now, calm, peaceful. He tugs her gently down, so she can kiss him, and does, once, again. He breaks the kiss, his face a dozen centimeters from hers, his fingers pushing her hair out of her face, so he can see her eyes, and she see his.

 

 

“I don’t like this. I _live_ for this. Every breath, every heartbeat, from now until my last, and likely beyond, is dedicated to this.”

He kisses her again, and it’s clear that he’s talking about the sex, desire, and pleasure between them, but wider as well, their home, this life, the universe they’re building with and for each other.

There’s another quiet, content breath. His light, and hers, together, blending into something that makes knees weak, and toes curl with pleasure.

Then he flips them, fast, and begins to thrust, deep, hard, breath and heart quickening.

“Kylo!” Half a gasp of surprise, half pleasure.

His head drops to hers, to wet, deep kisses, to nipping bites, and the wet slap of skin on skin. His dark, his passions, rising. Hers meeting his in arched hips, and fingernails down his back. His eyes meet hers again. “I’d kill for this. Destroy anything that threatened it, remove anything that gets in its path.” His hand is clasped behind her neck, hand gentle, firm, _hot._ His lips are hot, too. His dark pouring out of him in searing heat and rising pleasure.

 

 

His body moves faster, chasing release. She’s clinging to him, caught in the storm, in him, letting it all out, saying it, with words, because she likes hearing words, too. “I’d die for this. Lay my life down if it meant you got to keep going. End it with a smile on my face if you get to walk away.”

He’s not doing well keeping his voice going. Moving too fast, breathing too hard. _We’re building a life. Figuratively. Eventually…_ His body rushes, flares at this idea, pulsing hot, steady, high and deep inside her, taking her over the edge with the intensity of the thought, and the pleasure of _life_. When the lights stop flashing behind his eyes, he finishes the thought, _Literally. You and I, my life, yours, and we’ll make another life._

They’re still, quiet, and he kisses her gently. Eyes wide and dark on hers. Between rushed breaths, and slowing heartbeats, he says, “This is transcendent. I love it, need it, live it, breathe it. It’s who I am and want to be. It’s my armor, weapon, and faith.” He kisses her once more, and then gives her a little bit of a cocky brat smile. “So, no, I don’t _like it._ ”

 

 

She gently swats his shoulder, and then kisses it.

He snuggles in close, taking a moment to just lie with her, resting.

 

 

 

* * *

They do, eventually, end up in the bath. Close, snuggly, warm and wet. It feels good to float with each other for a while.

“You really can’t swim?” Kylo asks.

“You actually didn’t know that about me?”

He shrugs a bit. Raised on a desert, spent a year or so on the move, mostly in ships, then a planet with a lake that never got above 4. Of course, Rey can’t swim. “I probably should have put that together. Who’s supposed to be teaching you when it warms up?”

“I was thinking you, but I’m sure Rose would be happy to. Actually, probably a good idea to do that for all of us. I know Finn can’t, too, and probably at least half the kids.”

If he’d been thinking about it, he would have known that Finn can’t swim, either. Or if he can, he learned in the last year or two. Not like the First Order taught swimming. Not like it was a skill most people on a ship will ever need.

They float for a few more moments.

“What was your real first time like?” Rey asks.

Kylo takes a moment to try and sum that up. “Uh… Fast. I guess.”

“You guess?”

He rolls his eyes a little, and scoots a bit so she’s in his lap, and can make eye contact easily. “The doing part was fast… The working up to doing it took months.”

She raises an eyebrow. He closes his eyes for a moment, and then takes her hand in his, and thinks about it. It’ll be clearer and take a lot less explaining that way.

 

 

He probably spent about three months of debating, thinking, deciding, debating some more, and finally Kammun slapping him, (physically and metaphorically) upside the back of the head, pointing out that they burned the fucking temple to the ground and killed their master (though Kylo was awfully sure Luke wasn’t dead, but he hadn’t shared that.) and more than half the classmates, so there was literally no going back, and this wasn’t burning his bridges because the fucking bridge was not just ash, but had fallen into the river and flowed out to sea.

And Kylo had sighed at that, because, to a degree that was right, but…

Burning the temple, tearing it all down, destroying the Jedi, that had been rage and fear and… rash. A slew of decisions all piled on top of each other brought about by rage and blind panic.

This was not that. This was… predetermined. Chosen.

This was intentionally stepping over a line he’d held to his whole life, even when he really didn’t want to, and…

It was different.

That said, part of him, both his mind and shaft _wanted._ And wanted _hard._ And… he wasn’t a Jedi, so holding to the code was… weak… useless… trying to please a Master he left buried under a ton of smoking rubble…

And, like whiskey, which, honestly, about half of his Knights had really enjoyed, and the other half, like him, thought was highly overrated, he was a bit worried that this would just be disappointing. That he’d finally take the step, mind and emotions cold, break the vows he took when he claimed the title of Master, and it’d be… worthless. At worst disorienting and unpleasant, and at best, a cheap and hollow thrill.

But he _wanted._ And here, he could _have._ And he was twenty-three, and burning all the time, and…

“Didn’t you say your first kiss was at twenty-six?” Rey asks.

“I did.”

“You didn’t kiss her?”

He shakes his head, “Kissing, and a girl in my lap, that came later. That was twenty-six.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, and he drops back into the memories, making what happened clearer.

He spent close to twenty minutes just standing there, in one of the pleasure houses, surrounded by pretty people not wearing a lot of clothing. He was in his full blacks, with the mask (because in those days the mask only came off in the shower, and during the rare intervals he slept), supposedly deciding which of the Specs he wanted to ‘work with’ but really chewing his lip into oblivion, until he tasted blood, dithering about just turning around and leaving or going through with it.

(He can feel how sad this makes Rey, and he kisses her shoulder.)

Kammun nudged his shoulder.

He chose.

She was pretty. Blonde hair, blue eyes that still had a bit of gentleness to them, or maybe she was good at reading people, even people cased in head to toe black, and knew he needed that a lot more than her mouth or delta. Knew he needed a bit of gentleness, and some kindness, and maybe, if he’d let himself, though he didn’t, a little affection.

She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off, so she waved at him to follow her, led him to a private room, and tried to get his clothing off, but that didn’t happen.

She tried to talk to him, too, but he was mute with… everything. Shame, excitement, fear, longing.

He did undo his pants.

She looked at his shaft, jutting hard and high. He knew she was going to laugh, could feel it coming, but she didn’t. She just smiled, stroked her finger tips up the length of him, and grinned up at him. “Well, that’s a pretty shaft. But you’ve got to tell me what you want me to do with it, sweet.”

He swallowed hard, because _talking_ was going to be an issue. Hell, standing there, his shaft so hard it ached, the aftershocks of the pleasure burn of her fingers on him making the room spin around him, was already an issue. He felt like his knees were sinking into rubber, and he was half a minute from bolting away. But… If he didn’t say anything… That’d be almost as bad a running away… That’d be weakness and shame and letting someone see him fear. It’d be failure.

The vocal modulator on his mask kept his voice steady when his real voice cracked as he said, “Suck it.”

She grinned at him. “Good choice.” She knelt down, took him in her hands, rolled a slick down him, and then lowered her mouth to his shaft.

This was not whiskey. _This_ was _not_ overrated. _This_ he loved. _This_ was everything they ever said it would be and _more._ This was hot and plush and suck, and she was making pleased little humming noises, and he knew they were just to make him feel better, not any sort of genuine pleasure on her part, but he could pretend, and… oh… he’d _wanted_ and now he was _having_ and it was _amazing._

It probably only lasted a minute or two, and almost all of that was due to the lady on her knees being very good at what she was doing, because he was ready to spurt about ten seconds into it.

And when he did, his knees went weak, buckled, and he ended up on the floor, sort of half-reclining, half-sitting, brain blank, body shivering at the feel of _that._

She’d smiled at him, took care of the mess, gently tucked him back into his trousers, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “I hope to see you again,” before giving his gloved hand a little squeeze and seeing herself out.

He’d nodded absently, still floating on how _good_ that had felt. A billion times better than anything he’d ever done to himself.

Rey’s smiling at him. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Yeah, well…” He knows that’s not where that story ends, and she catches that.

“Kylo?”

He shakes his head. “No. That next bit…” He lays his head on her shoulder, and breathes in her scent, lets himself dip into the quiet of her Force. Then he kisses her forehead. And her lips, and rubs his together. “It’s not that I don’t want you to know. Not… factually. It’s…” he licks his lips again. “It’s… context. I can tell you about what happened, or what I’m thinking about, as facts. As: these are things that happened to me… but… I can’t tell you my stories the way you told me yours. I can’t, talk about how I feel about them, or what they did to me. Not these stories.”

“Then let me feel them. And I won’t press for commentary.”

He nods at that, and finishes that memory.

Snoke gave him a good ten minutes to get himself back together. He got up, left the pleasure specialists, very much planning on doing this as often as he possibly could, feeling really pleased with that decision. Really pleased with everything in the universe at that moment. It was likely the first moment… maybe ever… that he just felt _good._

And then Snoke was there, in his head, summoning him, filling him with dread. In the throne room, black and red and pain along the edges of his vision and thrumming through the Force of the room, Snoke started in on him, on how his desires were perverse, how his body was meant for pure things, like fire and death and pain, how he was betraying his strength with his weak, base, ugly, _needs._

He didn’t say it out loud, but he thought it, _You couldn’t have said this_ before?

Between the bolts of lightning and the beratement, Kylo knew Snoke wouldn’t have. After all, it wouldn’t have hurt nearly as bad to have never tasted how good that was and just forego it, then it would to know, and now _struggle._

And now, close to a decade later, he knows that it didn’t matter if he chose to see the pleasure specialists or not. If he’d turned around and left, Snoke would have called that weakness and cowardice and questioned him about his dedication, because how could he truly be dark if he kept holding onto the code of the light?

There were no right answer with Snoke. There were never any right answers, not once Snoke owned him. Because he wasn’t there to be right or good or talented. He was there to burn with pain, so Snoke could warm himself by Kylo’s fire.

And that’s something Kylo doesn’t want to talk about, not with his voice. He doesn’t want to get into how he feels about that.

Rey kisses him, strokes his hair, she can feel that he’s not withholding this because he thinks she’s too weak, or that she can’t take it, or that this is any reflection, at all, about her. “Context.”

He nods. “Snoke used my desires as a knife against me. And he cut me with them, a lot, but… You were abandoned and gang raped, twice. I… It feels like complaining about a hangnail to someone with an amputation. And… It’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t know. It’s not that there’s anything I won’t let you know. But it’s just… It feels bad, to me, to dump how this feels to me, on you.”

She strokes his face. He rests his forehead against her. “It’s not a competition, you know? Or only the one that got hurt worst gets to complain.”

 

 

He kisses her forehead again. “I do. I really do. It still feels bad.”

She nods. “Okay.”

They’re quite for a moment, and she says, “It’s not a hangnail, you know?”

“Yeah. I got close to talking about some of this with the guys. Actually, said some of it, and I could feel the horror in them. Apparently, that sort of thing, isn’t… normal. Even Finn, raised by the Hux-method, thought it was too far. I know it’s real. I know it was beyond wrong, but… Everything with Snoke was beyond wrong. And… It’s in _me._ This is a choice I get to make about how I, and you to a degree, get to shape and handle this, and… This is something I need.”

“Then it’s something you can have.”

“Thank you.”

He scoffs a little, face still pressed to her neck. “Our first time, our real first time, on the beach… When I was in your mouth, and close, and… fighting spurting. It was barreling down on me, and I’d never tried to push it off before… before finishing as fast as possible was always the goal… Get it done fast, and then move onto whatever came next. But, on the beach, I didn’t want it to end, and you said to me, ‘Enjoy it, Kylo.’ That was the first time, as an adult, I was encouraged to enjoy something. The first time anyone was ever doing something for me solely because they cared about my pleasure. That put me over more than anything your mouth was doing. First time I just _knew_ it was going to be okay. You weren’t going to vanish on me at the exact wrong second, no one was going to come marching over and wreck it, it was just going to be me and you and pleasure and… good. I knew it was going to be good, and that wasn’t my first time of any of the things we did, but it was the first time I really got to enjoy any of them.”

She lifts his face to hers, and kisses him, soft and easy. “The first few passes, the dream, or not dream… I know it wasn’t real, but it wasn’t imaginary, or the time in my room at Orlac’s school… I needed to be sure. I think that’s why the Force kept yanking you away. It was giving me room to want. Let me walk right up to the line, peer over it, and see if I thought I’d like what was on the other side. Room to be scared if I needed it. Room to pull back from you, emotionally regroup, make sure I was okay, and wanted to do more, go further, without crushing you by running away of my own volition.”

He nods. “It would have. If you’d… fucked me and ran away… Hell, kissed me and ran away… It would have crushed me. Everyone else left or pushed me away, and that would have just snapped whatever was left of my mind at that point. When we fought on Starkiller, I remember you thinking, screaming in your head, at me, to stay down. When you left on Crait… I got back up because if I didn’t, Hux was going to kill me then and there. But if you’d touched me, let me enjoy you, and then just left… That’s the thing that would have done it. I don’t think I could have gotten back up from that.”

Another long quiet moment of just breathing together. Then Rey says, “What do you want?”

He half smiles, a little. It’s not a happy gesture, though it is fairly peaceful, at least for him. He kisses her, soft, sweet. His hands curl through her hair, stroke between strands of brown silk. “The past doesn’t actually die, you know?”

“I know. We can’t kill it. Can’t change it. Just… have to bear it and try to do better by the future.”

He sighs and kisses her gently. He takes her hand in his, and says, “This wedding thing… Vows are part of that, right?”

She shrugs. “I think we get to do it however we like. Do you want… public vows?”

He smiles a little at that idea. “Maybe? Definitely, private ones.”

Rey lets that pass. They’ll figure that out later. “Private vows, for you and I.”

He lifts her hand, kisses her marriage band, and says, “I will use my past, and the lessons learned from it, to build a better life with you.”

She lifts his hand, and kisses his marriage band, “I will use my past, and the lessons learned from it, to build a better future, with you.”

 


	34. Darling

3/13/3

Most women of Thea Schiff’s station have a droid to do the errands and shopping for them. She doesn’t begrudge them that convenience, but a long, long time ago, she found that going out, personally, to do the sort of chores and errands the other wives of her husband’s men do, makes it a _lot_ easier to see where the rough edges are.

It’s been a long time since the days of the Empire, back when her family, and the families of the men her husband commanded, would be stationed in actual cities all around the Empire, but the lessons learned there are still valuable.

After all, the way the local butcher treats the spouses of service men tells someone who’s paying attention a _lot_ about how that occupation is going to go.

And there’s no substitute for walking through town, no better way to get a feel for the attitudes, often unspoken, of your men, as well.

A man in uniform will often be cagey about directly bitching to his commander about issues that are ‘beneath’ them. But he’ll complain to his wife and girlfriend, and she’ll complain to her friends, and if you happen to be in line behind them at the store, or sitting in the next booth at the cafe… Well, it’s always good to keep an ear out.

 _The Supremacy_ is a bit more contained than the towns, cities, and freeports she’d been stationed with while Josh was working his way up, but the practice keeps her sharp.

And lets her see… interesting things. Like… it makes her smile, Lady Ren is actually out and about, sitting on one of the benches on the F-Deck, reading.

Thea settles in to watch. She, in general, approves of the idea of their leader having a consort. She, in specific, thinks that the idea of Rey, a calming, softening presence, will help them shake off some of the harder edges the days of Snoke left them with.

She’s not entirely sure she buys Kylo's idea of just… letting people come to them. It seems… inefficient. But… given who Kylo… _Ben_ used to be, that’s likely as good as it’s going to get. She really can’t expect the child of Organa to be a conqueror. If it takes them longer to increase their grasp, well… This might be slower and more stable than the way they’ve done it before.

At this point in her life, much closer to eighty than seventy, she’s okay with slower and stable.

She’s also very okay with what she’s seeing. Rey being out, in public, letting people see her. That’s… good.

Maybe… Thea’s eyes narrow. Not everyone recognizes Lady Ren, not yet, especially not how she’s dressed right now. Some idiot captain is trying his luck. And he’s not exactly noticing, or doesn’t care, about the first two brush offs. He's absolutely not noticing who he's trying to chat up.

Thea’s about to get up and offer her own company, because nothing wards off unwanted male attention like a seventy-six year old woman, but… Rey tells him off, and he leaves, tail tucked between his legs.

The next one does, too. Nothing like a pretty girl in a pretty dress, without a man next to her, to attract the rascals.

From the way she’s reading, it looks like she’s not interested in company… Anyone with the sense of a gluber should be able to tell this is not a woman looking for a friend.

Oh. Thea’s eyes go wide.

Lady Ren’s not interested in her previous company. She seems very interested in this one.

He’s… a friend. She’s an adult woman. She’s allowed to have a tall, blonde companion, with horrible fashion sense. Who puts an orange jumper over a pair of drab green trousers or wears… spectacles? She hasn’t seen a pair of them in fifty years.

She can feel the cold growing in the pit of her stomach. Just… a friend… a companion… to… talk… They’re just… talking…

 

 

 _Fuck!_ She thinks it loud and vicious. _Stupid, stupid fucking girl!_

She’s not just kissing a man who isn’t Ren, she’s doing it in public, on the fucking F-Deck, of his flag ship.

At seventy-six, Thea Schiff doesn’t run, but she can hustle awfully quick. She does wear a comm. She hits the buttons on automatic. “Darling, meet me in our ship.”

 

 

* * *

Josh Schiff, Grand Admiral of the Order, second highest ranked man in the entire system, second only to Lord Ren, knows that when his wife comms him out of nowhere and calls him Darling, it’s time to drop everything and run.

That’s their system.

If she calls him Darling, everything is about to go so fucking sideways that the universe is on the verge of imploding.

He doesn’t even make an excuse. He cuts his meeting short, and is heading to their ship.

Their _private, routinely debugged,_ unmarked, ship.

 

* * *

He doesn’t beat her there, but he’s not far behind. As soon as he’s in, she shuts the hatch, and has the coordinates planned. They’re getting _out_ of Order space, and fast.

Just because the ship is debugged, doesn’t mean there hasn’t been something they missed. That said, they know the range of both the furthest scanner, and right now, they’re beyond it.

“What happened?” Schiff asks, once they’re clear to talk, really talk.

Thea tells him.

For a moment he inhales slowly, and exhales, and nods. “Baby, are you sure. Those eyes of yours…”

Her vision isn’t as sharp as it used to be, that’s true, but it’s not _bad._

“I was less than twenty meters away. She didn’t notice me, but I noticed her. And her… friend. Tall and _blond_. Short, shaggy hair. An orange jumper! There is no possible way that was Ren.”

Shiff cradles his head in his hands for a moment, and bites out the same thing Thea said, “That stupid fucking girl!” He growls softly. “Fuck. FUCK!”

 

 

She nods. “What…”

“How many people saw?”

“She was right there, out in public. I don’t know how many noticed. I didn’t see a lot of heads turn or people tracking them. On her own, she’s a lot less noticeable than he is. Two men actually came up to hit on her before her… friend appeared. Neither of them recognized her.”

“Fuck!”

He turns his comm on. “C8, where is the Master right now?”

“His comm is in his room, right now. I’m fairly certain he’s not in there, though.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Sir?” C8 sounds, as best he can, concerned. “Do you want me to check on him?”

“Just poke your head in and see if he’s in there.” He covers his comm, and says to Thea, “Get Ylness up on your comm.”

Thea nods. Any and every commander of Josh’s level needs people absolutely loyal to him. Ylness Urath, Commander of the Resh Squad is that for Josh. Officially, Ylness and the Resh Squad don’t exist. They are not on any roster of Order personnel. Technically, they weren’t part of the Empire, either. But Resh Squad has a long and glorious, if you ride in the right circles and can catch a hint of them, history.

“He’s not in his room, sir.”

“Thank you, C8. Let me know when he’s in, okay?”

“Certainly, sir. Should I ask what this is about?”

“No.”

“Then, I won’t.”

Thea hands her comm over.  Josh doesn’t even begin with a hello. “Top secret, Ylness. You, me, and no one else knows this. I need you to grab Mistress Ren and take her into protective custody. Take her to my wife, and then get both of them off the ship. Do not tell me where you take them. Tell her you’re there on Ren’s orders and you have to get her off the ship, fast, and then do it. If her companion fights you on it, kill him, just get her off the ship, okay?”

Ylness doesn’t ask questions. “Protective custody.”

“No harm is to come to her. Just find her, and get them off the ship. Thea'll be waiting for you and your men in her ship. As of an hour ago, Lady Ren was on the F-Deck, keeping company with a…”

Thea describes the man with her.

“I don’t care what you do to him, just get her off ship, preferably before Ren finds her. If he engages with you before you can get her off the ship, she’s at his mercy, but… please, get her off the ship before he finds her.”

“And once she’s secure?” Ylness asks.

“Treat her gently. She is a guest of my wife and under my protection. I’ll eventually tell you what to do with her, but right now, first priority is getting her off the ship.” He doesn’t say, _So, he doesn’t kill her when he finds out_ but he’s sick to his stomach at the idea of it.

 

 

* * *

They’re twenty-seven minutes out from _The Supremacy_ , which means that Josh and Thea have a little time to plan.

“Are you going to tell him?” Thea asks.

He’s rubbing his forehead. “No. It’s not… It shouldn’t come from me.”

His comm chirps. C8’s voice. “Grand Admiral. Master Ren has just returned to his rooms. Shall I tell him…”

“No. Just… if he tries to leave, keep him in there, okay?”

“I can do that.”

Josh comms off. “Small miracles.”

“So, who tells him? Pat?”

Josh feels like he’s tasting that. “Almost… Just… No. No, whoever tells him has to be fast enough to dodge whatever comes when he hears.”

Fast enough is what gets Thea’s attention. “The new Grand Marshall.”

“Jon. That’s… Yeah. His friend.” He pulls up Jon on his comm.

“Grand Admiral?” he sounds confused to see who’s calling him.

“Is this line secure?”

“Uh… No. Give me a minute.” There’s a few moment’s pause, followed by, “Okay, we’re on the hex-quad-code now, and I’m in a private room. What’s going on?”

And Schiff explains.  

 

* * *

Jon’s first thought is that this is a joke. Anyone who’s ever seen the two of them together knows that this just… There’s no way. Let alone the idea that after what Rey shared with him… There’s no way she’s that good of a liar.

“Are you sure?” Frakes asks, tentatively, after all, this is the Grand Marshall offering him this. He might not believe it, but it wouldn't do to just smack him in the face with it. “I mean… That’s… really out of character.”

Thea’s voice is steady. “I watched her do it.”

Frakes is still doubtful. But, now he's got the Grand Marshall's lady as an eye witness and this is going to be a heap of trouble if he flat out tells her she's wrong. He thinks for a moment for how to work with this. “This feels like a plot. Someone fucking with him. I mean… We know face dancers exist. They’re rare, but… They won’t fool a camera, right. Do we have footage of it?”

That takes both Schiffs up short. “Good point. Let’s…” Josh spends a few moments keying requests into his pad, checking with Thea, getting exactly the time and where they were. It takes five minutes, but they get the security feed that covers that section of the F deck, playing on both is pad and Jon’s.

It’s a bad angle, and it takes them a moment to find Rey, but when they do, it’s clearly her. And her companion…

"He did  _not_ look like that in person. It's not even the same clothing," Thea says, looking uncomfortable.

Josh grabs her comm and gets Ylness up again. “Ylness, bely those orders. False alarm. Call them off.” Then Josh looks to Thea. “Well, I suppose we’ve got confirmation of that rumor that he can appear to be someone else.”

Jon snerks a bit on his side of that. “Tall, blonde, and an orange jumper?” he asks Thea.

“Spectacles, too.”

Jon's chuckling at that idea. “He really doesn't enjoy the kind of attention The Master gets when he's out and about. But Force alone knows what he was thinking with that. I’ll, uh… discretely mention to him at some point in the not wildly distant future that if he and Rey want to play in public he’s got to work the magic on both or neither of them.”

“That’s… a good plan,” Josh says.

“I’m going to comm off,” Jon says, and then his line goes dead.

Josh looks at his wife, shoulders slumping in relief and exasperation. “You know, the Emperor never used his powers to pull shit like this.”

“How would we know? We were both twenty years off when he was a young man.”

“I suppose.” He shakes his head. “I told you about our last meeting, right? The one where I couldn’t keep Ren focused on anything but her.”

She chuckles at that. “You did. Poor boy’s got it bad.”

He pulls her a little closer. “You miss those days?”

“Sometimes.” She kisses him. “Nothing saying we couldn’t have a night out ourselves.”

He does smile at that.

 

* * *

3/16/3

 

“Good date?” Jon asks Kylo a few days later, when they get some time not dominated by work.

Kylo blinks at him, completely unaware of what Jon’s talking about.

“A few nights ago. You and Rey. F-Deck. Apparently, Thea Schiff saw Rey out flirting and kissing with someone who, on the video footage, looks an awful lot like you, but she couldn’t, by sight, identify as you.”

Kylo’s mouth opens and closes, and then he winces, hard.

“Yeah,” Jon says. “Schiff had his pet stormtroopers searching the ship for her, to get her into protective custody before you found out, fortunately we got video of it before they grabbed her.”

Kylo rubs his lips together. “Protective custody?”

Jon just looks at him. Then he says, “And I was the one going to get dragooned into telling you, and I was going to go into that meeting in head to toe body armor, or possibly do it over the comm, because… Well, you’re fucking scary when you’re mad, you know?”

Kylo swallows at that, too. He’s… actually incapable of imagining what he’d do in that situation, because he cannot begin to imagine Rey off… fucking around with someone else… But… if it had been real… He supposes being wary and armored, and… likely in a different ship, possibly quadrant of the galaxy, and doing it over the comm… might not have been a bad plan.

“So, whatever it is you do that makes people report you as being tall and blond, with blindingly terrible fashion sense, go do that to her, too, _before_ the two of you go off and have fun on the _Supremacy._ ”

Kylo’s thinking that’s a good plan, and then he tilts his head to the side, “Blond?”

“Thea reported you as being big, tall, blond, no scars, wearing spectacles, and a bright orange jumper.”

“Huh…” Speaking of things Kylo can't imagine, a version of himself that looks like that is on the top of the list.

“Huh?” Jon asks.

“It’s a do-not-recognize spell. I’ve got a do-not-look spell, too, but we’re out, and part of the fun of being out is other people seeing us. It’s… difficult to order dinner if people won’t look at you. So, this one makes them not see, me. I have no idea how it looks to them. I can’t see it in a mirror, and Rey sees the real me, too, so…”

“Apparently, your alter ego is a big, blond guy, who was wearing an orange jumper.”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “Have I told you before the Force is an ass?”

Jon sniggers. “No, but I get that sense from time to time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, I went there. ;) Hi, Matt!


	35. Training Days: The Maji

3/20/2

“Okay, so, what, if anything, do we think about that?” Rey asks the kids.

They used to do their lessons in the chapel, but these days, it’s just too bloody cold in there. And dark. It’s designed for natural light, which is great, even on cold, snowy days, until, of course, the damn snow piles up and freezes on the dome and you’re sitting in the middle of three watts of light because there’s a meter-deep snow and ice frozen to the outside of your building. And yes, dark is natural, dark is important, learning to be in and with the dark is a skill Rey’s trying to build in herself and in the kids, that said, if you’re attempting to work on balance and strengthening exercises, enough light to see what she’s demonstrating comes in handy.

To say nothing of when C4-98, the tutoring droid, is going over how to do long division.

So, they’re in the kitchen. These days, they do a lot in the kitchen. It’s warm. There are snacks. Everyone fits in there. And, it’s less than half a klick from everyone’s cottage, so that makes for a much more comfortable walk in the cold and wind.

Jacen’s sitting in the back of the room, closest to the door. Usually, he sits with his friends, and they did save him a chair, but they’re at one of the tables near the counter Rey’s sitting cross-legged on top of, and to get there, he’d have to go through the whole room.

Which he doesn’t want to do, mostly because he got in late. Rey doesn’t say anything, but she does _look_ at him. He slouches a bit. It is his fault that he whacked the chrono and ‘slept in’ this morning. It’s not his fault that Critt was in their living room petting with Savarah late into the night and he had to… listen… to it.

Not really. They were quiet, but… Neither of them were thinking quietly, so he might as well have just pulled up a chair and watched.

He’s got his first training run with Chewie and Finn tomorrow, and getting out of his cottage when Critt’s _entertaining_ is probably the best thing for him.

That or figuring out how to just ride it through Savarah’s eyes. If he’s going to have to deal with the jealousy, he should at least get to enjoy the show… For a moment he's really enjoying that idea. After all, it wouldn't take  _that_ much focus to pull off, and it'd certainly add to his bank of wank fodder. He glances ahead, where Critt's sitting, next to Savarah, and the empty chair he saved for Jacen.

 _Fuck._ Jacen just thinks it. He just... can't. It doesn’t feel right.

It’d be so much easier if it did.

As the other kids are heading out for their various chores, Rey wiggles a finger at him, beckoning him forward, and then meets him at the table where his friends had been. “You okay?”

He shrugs. “Eventually. Rough night.”

“Yeah. I can feel it. You got a plan for how to have fewer rough nights?”

“Run away?”

Rey smiles a little at that. “Sometimes that’s the best plan, but… again… you could try _talking_ to him.”

Jacen sighs at that. It’s the second time Rey’s suggested that, and apparently, she suggested that to the girls, too. He just doesn’t know what it is she thinks he could possibly get out of that. “Rey… Uh… How do you think that conversation goes? Hey, Critt, yeah, so… Uh… You know how you feel about Savarah? Yeah. I feel that way about you, and it’d be really nice if you felt that way about me, too.” He tries a wide, open lipped smile to go with that. It comes off as a death’s head grin.

“Maybe not exactly like that.”

“Hey, Critt, remember those things Poe said about what guys could do to each other? Wanna decide that you like boys all of a sudden _and_ want to try them with me? I promise I’ll enjoy it! And I’ll do everything I possibly can to make sure you do.” Another manic grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Rey winces.

“Uh huh. I know you’re not telling me to _talk_ to him, and without doing that, I’m fairly sure there is no version of that conversation that gets me where I want to be, so, running away.”

“I’m sorry.”

 

 

“Yeah. I’ve… just got to get through this, hopefully find… someone, thing else to focus on.”

“Okay, how about… Have you tried talking to Poe about that?”

That has Jacen’s attention, in a good way. “Why Poe?”

“He’s got some experience wanting someone he can’t have. Maybe he could help.”

Jacen does think about that. “I like Poe.”

“And Poe’s likely willing to have a chat with you. Bring it up the next time he takes you out on _Micah_.”

“That’s…” He runs the days. “Probably a week from now. I’ve got you, an hour of free time, then lessons with C4, Kylo’s grabbing me after that for one-on-one training, and then supper here. Tomorrow, I’m off with Chewie and Finn for a few days, so…”

“Good. Now, about that free hour…”

“I’m not getting to skip out on today’s lesson, am I?”

Rey shakes her head. “Nope. Focusing on me, now, okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Sith, all passion and dark. Jedi, all serenity and light. Sounds boring and limiting, and even if it didn’t, neither are good solutions to being living creatures in this galaxy. I wasn’t totally zoning out.”

Rey does look pleased by that. “Yes. So, let’s work on finding your own balance. Settle in, and let’s feel it. Where’s the point that your own dark and light melt into a stable gray?”

Jacen resettles himself. He shifts out of his slouch into an easy, relaxed, feet on the floor, hands on his knees, seated pose, shuts his eyes, and slowly breathes in and out.

This is a lot easier than it was when he started. When Rey first had him do this, the idea that he’d just sit around, breathe, and think was ridiculous. The idea that it’d be anything other than a boring waste of time was beyond ridiculous into insane, but as he’s gotten deeper into it, he can… see… access… more of himself, and the ability to do that has made using his skills easier.

He doesn’t know all the tricks, yet, but he can feel where the missing pieces are, and he’s getting a better view of things he didn’t even know were options before, like low-level healing.

 _Where’s the point?_ To a degree, this is easier to do with his body. But, that’s also the, or maybe a, point, he guesses. They all, to a degree, have an easier time standing on one foot, than on… Finding their internal balance points. (Rey keeps telling them that standing on one foot gets easier when they find the internal point, too, but as of now, Jacen’s skeptical on that.)

As he’s shifting through the feel of his own Force, he can see Rey’s, bright and steady and… changing. He wasn’t expecting that. Rey’s… steady. There are a lot of things about her, but those things all… stay. And now… they’re moving.

“You’re shifting.”

“I know.” Her eyes are closed, and she’s meditating with him. “Focusing on you. I’m focusing on me. Where’s your point?”

He breathes deeply, seeking that spot, between passion and serenity, between life and death, between anger and joy. It’s there, somewhere. Every time he gets closer to it, he does find doing… everything… else easier. He’s just got to find it, and then… balance on it.

 

 

* * *

“Crouch,” Kylo bites out. This is the _fourth_ time he’s had to tell Jacen to do this. Every time he attacks, he wants to leap up, extend up onto the balls of his feet, and go at Kylo full height.

To a degree, Kylo understands what Jacen’s doing. Normally, Jacen’s the tallest one around on Lirium. He uses his height and voice to take up space and make himself seem more… everything. Or, perhaps, he uses it to make himself _less_ a seventeen-year-old kid.

But Kylo’s got eight centimeters on him, which means he can’t use his physical body to impose himself around Kylo. So, he’s trying to get closer to an equal height. Trying to use his body to fend off some of the fight. Probably not a terrible tactic if he’s sparring with Critt or Elias. Hell, it might not be a terrible technique for Finn or Poe, (Well, after he’s got enough fight to last more than a minute against either of them.) but… It’s just… appallingly bad tactics against _him_.

And, as Kylo leans back and swats at Jacen, who’s over-extended (because he’s trying to pretend he’s got an extra eight centimeters that likely aren’t ever going to show up) he overbalances and goes down.

This is _frustrating._ By any and all metrics Jacen should be a hell of a lot better with a saber than he is. He’s (for the amount of training he’s had) an _excellent_ pilot, which involves the use of both hands and feet independently of each other. A saber should be child’s play compared to that.

Next run at it, Jacen drops down, a little, barely, and waits for Kylo to go at him again. And as soon as Kylo’s moving, Jacen’s up, again, full height and extension, saber in one hand… This time, Kylo whacks him, hard enough to bruise, not hard enough to break the skin, across his lead shin with his training saber.

“Kylo! The fuck, man!” He’s dropped his practice saber and kneeling, rubbing his shin. “You did not need to do that.”

“I’ve asked you _nicely_ to crouch. Several times. I’ve explained why you need to crouch. Several more times, and I’m about to do it, again. You are a human, which means most of your strength is in your _legs._ ” He taps Jacen’s thigh with the training blade. It’s hot, so he can really feel it through his trousers, but it won’t burn. _“_ Standing straight up, you can’t use them for power. On top of that, you aren’t fucking Yoda. Your body is longer than your blade, so you need to make yourself more compact to protect it. Plus, you physically cannot intimidate me with your body. I’ve got eight centimeters, fifteen years, and probably twenty-five kilos on you. It’s not going to happen.” He lightly taps that shin again. “Lesson learned, I hope.”

Jacen winces. “Just because they broke your legs to teach that lesson doesn’t mean you have to break mine.”

Kylo rolls his eyes and gives him a hand up. “It’s just bruised. You won’t even have a welt.” As he’s saying that, it’s occurring to him he’s never _told_ Jacen that story. “Am I projecting or did you go looking for that?”

“You’re projecting. Yeah, I get it. Protect your legs. The fact some maniac broke yours doesn’t mean you need to do it to me.” Jacen returns to position, crouching this time, deeply enough he can cover his whole body with his saber. “It’s harder this way.”

“I _know._ Believe it or not there was a time when I was a gangly seventeen-year-old who couldn’t fight for hours without a break. You’re still building up strength. That’s normal. But once you’ve built it, when need power, you’ll be able to pull it from the big muscles in your legs, instead of hoping your arms are up to the challenge. Here’s a hint, they aren’t. Mine aren’t.” Jacen looks skeptical at that, each one of Kylo’s arms is the size of two of his. “You are human, your strength is in your legs. Finesse and fine tuning is in your arms. Okay, enough talking. Come at me again.”

Jacen’s eyeing him, getting a feel for how Kylo’s going to move, where he is, how he’s balanced, the position of his training saber. He does, as requested, crouch, and runs the fight in his head first. How he’ll move, what Kylo will likely do in response, how to counter that. Every version of this he can think of involves him getting more bruises.

He closes his eyes, breathes, feels for the point. _Find your balance. Where’s the gray?_ He exhales long and slow. _There._ Jacen shakes his head and then lowers his training saber. “No.”

None of the kids have ever even suggested not doing this to Kylo. The _all_ like getting to run around and whack at him with training sabers. Granted, Jacen’s the only one he’s really starting to work with on any serious level when it comes to form, control, and strategy. So, yes, this is more precise and difficult, but… “No? You giving up?”

Jacen nods. He can feel it. _This_ isn’t part of his balance.

Kylo’s still staring at him, stunned, but he is staring, not immediately attacking or demanding that he get on with it, so… Talking. “On this, yes. This is wasting my time and yours.” He tosses his saber to Kylo. “A more elegant weapon for another age? That’s Obi Wan’s line, right?”

“According to Luke. Yes.” Kylo’s still a bit annoyed, but Jacen’s making it clear that he should listen, so, he puts the blades on the floor and turns back to Jacen, paying attention.

Jacen’s looking at Kylo’s actual saber. He raises his eyebrow, and Kylo nods. Then he pulls the saber to himself, and Kylo’s pleased to see that he’s mastered his telekenetics enough to do that. Jacen holds it, swishes it around a few times, but doesn’t turn it on. It's clear he's surprised by how heavy it is. “The weapon of the Jedi Knight.”

“Before I rebuilt it. Before the crystal cracked, back when it was still blue.” He pulls the saber to his own grip and ignites it. The red flame sears through the yellow light of the training gym, and a second later the cross guard comes to life. “No Jedi ever had a saber like this.” He smirks a bit. “Technically, this isn’t a saber. It’s based on something called a claymore. All blades used to be made of metal. The one this is based on was bigger, heavier blade, with a cross guard to protect your hands. Normally used two-handed, maybe one-and-a-half if you had the strength for it.”

“You’re not a Jedi.” Jacen nods a bit, as Kylo extinguishes the blade. “I’m not a Jedi, either. I have never been and never will be a Jedi. I don’t want to be a Jedi, let alone a Knight.”

Kylo’s hearing that, but not sure what, exactly to do with it. “Not even a Maji Knight?” _or a Knight of Ren._ He mentally shakes his head at that. The Knights of Ren are, and should remain, dead. They aren’t reshaping the past, they’re building anew, and better, from it.

Jacen shakes his head. He then looks at Kylo’s saber. “If I need that, I’ve already failed.” He flicks his tongue to his upper lip. “The Force gave me a voice. A voice and a pretty face. I can feel it. I’m not made for this.”

Kylo pulls a towel to his face, and blots the sweat, thinking. Part of him is aware of the fact that this isn’t _easy_ for Jacen, which is part of why he’s not enjoying it. Part of him is aware of the fact that, as he said, the Force gave Jacen a _voice,_ so he’s weighing out how persuasive this argument _actually_ is. And part of him is remembering a slew of adults who wanted to bend him into a shape he wasn’t made for.

Kylo glances at the tank top Jacen always wears to train, and thinks about the scars that are under it, the ones Jacen hasn’t spoken about, but he _felt_ them when he watched Kylo and some of the others strip down to their trousers to train, and he kept his shirt on. Knowing they’re there, and sensing the shape of them, if not the exact image, Kylo comes up with, “It’s important to be able to defend yourself.”

“I know, but…” Jacen stares at the saber and shakes his head again, “not like that.” He’s quiet for a moment, and Kylo can feel him getting an image of his future self. “I’ll keep a blade on me, wrist sheath or something, a last-ditch effort weapon. Learn enough with it so that I’m never completely at the mercy of my mouth, but…” He focuses on the future Jacen McGy, Maji Knight, robes and light saber, and shares it with Kylo, at least as well as he can. The image won’t form, not the way his other glimpses of the future do. “That’s not me.”

There’s a moment where Kylo feels, almost, like saying, “It could be. If you practiced and worked at it. It’d get easier and you’d probably like it.” He doesn’t. He doesn’t have to. Jacen felt it, and from the looks of it, he appreciates Kylo not giving that voice. Instead, Kylo says, “If you ever feel like it is you. You know where I am.”

Jacen nods at that.

Kylo tosses a towel at him, and Jacen begins to mop himself off, too. They both sit on the floor of his training gym, apparently talking today. “So… What do you want to do? What… isn’t wasting your time?”

 

 

Jacen thinks about it. Thinks about who he’s supposed to be, as well as he can see it now, at least. “Flying. That’s definitely part of it. Poe’s letting me take _Micah_ out some. That’s a start. Going out with Chewie and Finn tomorrow. Flying and fast talking. That’s definitely part of it.”

He lets Kylo feel how flying feels to him, and Kylo nods at that. “Yeah.”

“You feel that way with a saber in your hand.”

“I feel that way in a cockpit, too.”

Jacen looks surprised at that. “You didn’t feel that way when you brought us here.”

“Because getting all of you in my ship is stressful. On my own, fighting… Any sort of fighting… Ship, saber, hand to hand… I like that. You like flying.”

“I do.”

Kylo thinks back. “Did you get through the sims far enough to begin combat training?”

“The most basic level. I got moved up here for level one non-atmo with live ships, officer training, and intensive combat maneuvers.” As he’s saying it, he knows that Kylo didn’t go through First Order flight training, so he understands the words and knows what they must correlate with, but he doesn’t _know_ what that means.

“You want to get back to it?”

“Eventually. I’ll earn my stripes, eventually, but not yet. A lot of what Rey does with us, the focus, the ability to balance, that’s helping. I know it’s useful. Maybe not so much on how to use my powers, not yet, but on how to decide what to use them for. I… can feel this is something I need.”

Kylo half inclines his head at that. “I found figuring out what to do with them a hell of a lot harder than mastering them, so… Yeah, it is.”

“I also remember you offering to teach me some tricks, too. Wouldn’t mind moving forward on that.”

Kylo rubs his lips together on that. Then he looks at the practice sabers. “Those tricks.”

“You’re evading.”

Not a good plan to try that sort of tactic with Jacen. Fine. “All right, full-on honesty. For us, for… as long as we’re doing this, that’s the rule. No bantha shit from either of us.”

Jacen looks amused by that. “Is that a rule, or just… a nod toward reality. You’re not a good enough liar to lie to me, and I’m not well-trained enough to do it to you?”

Kylo sighs. “How about, it’s a nod toward reality, and also a sign of mutual respect? We might not be able to successfully lie to each other, but we’ll also choose to be honest with one another.”

Jacen smiles, a little at that. “I like that.”

“Good.” Kylo sighs. “Honesty. You’re not exactly a grown-up, but you aren’t a kid, either, and I’m worried that if I teach you the tricks you need to fully master your voice talent, you’ll use it in ways that’ll hurt you and everyone around you.”

Jacen doesn’t _like_ that, but he understands what Kylo means by it.

“And I don’t like feeling that way because rewind fifteen years, and I had a pile of adults with similar concerns trying to hedge me into shapes I didn’t want to be in.”

Jacen inclines his head, and Kylo’s not sure if it’s a relief that he’s willing to listen, or if this is him being able to see, to feel, what sort of tactics will work best for getting Kylo to go where he wants him.

Jacen responds to the thought he doesn’t verbalize. “Honesty. Yes, I’m looking to leverage this, but I’m also genuinely interested in you, too.”

Kylo nods. “Okay. Concern. My concerns. Take Jon.”

That gets a massive eye roll, and a tangible wave of annoyed snark. “He wanted that.”

“No, he didn’t. _You_ wanted it. He...”

“Liked it.” _Don’t even think about telling me he didn’t._

Since it was abundantly clear that Jon did like it, Kylo’s not going to challenge that. “I’m not saying he didn’t. But I also know that he doesn’t _want_ you. He’s… maybe developing a thing for Poe, and still mourning his husband, so, you’re not on the scanners, okay?”

Jacen snorts. “I wasn’t looking to marry the guy. Just get tuffed. He was interested. He was thinking and…”

“You blasted everyone in a fifty kilometer radius with enough raw lust that _everyone_ was interested. Random guys on the F-Deck were wandering around wondering why they’d suddenly gone hard for no reason they could ascertain. And… That’s part of what I mean about… Not being a kid and not being an adult and not being sure if teaching you how to use that is a good idea. Because I know if you could have put the right spin on that he would have taken you to bed and that would have just… complicated things, for him and you.”

 _Massive_ eye roll. “Gods, Kylo! It’s _just_ fucking. It’s not that complicated.”

Kylo watches him, and tries to really _feel_ what Jacen’s telling him. Because, for him, even when it was just fucking, it wasn’t _just_ fucking. It takes a moment, and then he says, “Oh… You…”

Jacen knows what Kylo’s understanding all of a sudden. “Telepath. That’s the word you’re looking for. It’s in one of Rey’s old books. I’m a telepath. I can hear/feel/see what people are thinking. You’re an empath with sharp telepathy skills, too. You feel what they’re feeling/thinking, primarily, and can catch the actual thoughts sometimes, too, if you’re really working at it, or like with us, we’re close and not blocking each other. It’s very much not the same thing.”

Kylo immediately gets the difference. “It’s really not. That’s… why you’re sane, isn’t it?” Kylo can feel the threads of Jacen’s family lines. “Your mother…”

“Felt and heard too much. I think. I don’t actually know. I don’t remember her, but… That’s in the things my grandfather didn’t say. For me… It’s like having loud neighbors. I’m fairly good at shutting the noise out.”

“So… You could tell Jon was interested…”

Jacen nods. “I got interested in him first.”

“Even the popcorn noticed that. I’m not kidding about how much desire you pumped into the area. _I_ was interested in Jon for a minute there, riding off of you.”

Jacen smirks at that. “Empath.” He giggles a bit. “Must have been educational.”

Kylo’s voice is Tatooine dry when he says, “Certainly.” He shifts back to his normal tones. “So, you see Jon, and are _interested._ And he’s got enough sensitivity to pick up on the pile of lust you dumped on everyone, so he’s interested, and you can pick up what he’s thinking—“

“But I can’t _feel_ it. He’s got an amazingly sharp visual fantasy life, so that was… impressive. No ambiguity there. I know for a _fact_ that he was having a perfectly good time until you mentally tackled him and pummeled him about the head with NO!”

“He’s not good for you.”

That gets an eye roll, too. As well as a level of jaded exasperation a seventeen-year-old shouldn’t be able to produce. “Kylo, he was more than perfectly capable of doing anything and everything I wanted from him. If we’re going to talk about more than fucking, we’re going to be talking about Critt, who isn’t capable of doing _anything_ I want from him, and honestly, that’ll just depress both of us, so…”

Kylo more than understands the _stay away from that_ that Jacen’s got over Critt right now, so he doesn’t touch that. “Okay, how about this? You’re not good for Jon. You may just be looking to have someone handsome to service your tool; he’s not. And because of your power, his ability to turn you down without me tackling him with NO is _limited._ ”

Jacen has the grace to admit Kylo might be onto something with that. “Yeah, that’s the sort of thing I couldn’t get off of him unless he was thinking about it, and he _really_ wasn’t.”

“Because he _couldn’t,_ because you overpowered him. You just being you were basically… un-turn-downable.”

Jacen looks a little uncomfortable at that. “I could _see_ what he wanted, and some of the things he was remembering. Apparently, Jon has had some _very_ good times over the years. I couldn’t _feel_ them. I don’t have any empathy, beyond the ability to figure out what people likely should be feeling given what they’re thinking. But I know what he was thinking, and whatever was in the back of his mind, the front of it was perfectly happy to spend some time in a dark corner with me.”

Kylo nods at that, and sighs. “Yeah. I know.” He sighs again. “You’ll hate this. That, and things like that, makes me more wary about moving forward, because if you’ve got enough empathy, it’s not just easy, it’s pretty much unavoidable, to take the other person into account. And without it, it’s really easy to just take _you_ and your wants and needs into account.”

Jacen’s quiet for a moment, sensing what Kylo isn’t saying. “He cut you off from it? Who are you thinking of? And, what happened to his face?”

Kylo sighs at that. “That’s Snoke.”

Jacen winces a bit. “And that’s why we never saw him. Just putting the mark of the First Order on everything makes a lot more sense now.”

Kylo doesn’t dispute that. “I never knew what happened to his face, but, as you noticed, it wasn’t pretty. And… For a long time, I felt everyone and everything very intensely. When I left Luke to go to Snoke, that dulled down, a lot. It didn’t vanish, but it was significantly less intense. Then I found Rey, and I could feel her, very brightly.”

“You killed Snoke, and… It’s coming back.”

“But not the level it was before. I’m not sure if I’m burnt out, or developed enough emotional calluses that it’s not as fierce. I… prefer it this way. It’s easier not to know what everyone thinks/feels about you all the time.”

Jacen inclines his head on that. “This might be your natural level. If he could tamp you down, he could probably nudge the sensitivity up, too.”

Kylo blinks slowly at that. He’s never put that idea together, but… “Fuck.” A lot of pieces all fall into place. He was a naturally sensitive child, but not necessarily _that_ sensitive. And… he thinks back, he doesn’t remember ever getting hit with approval, or pleasure, or… He inhales sharply, it’s just not possible, not rationally, not logically, that no one, ever, in his entire life, ever managed to approve of anything he did. It’s just… _not._ He just never _felt_ it. He was constantly being fed a diet of every doubt, second thought, ill opinion, an uncensored gut reaction of everyone around him, but he never got the other side, so he just assumed there wasn't one. “Fuck,” he says it softly, again.

Jacen sighs, too. “That’s why you’re afraid of what I’ll do. Someone overpowered you, and you couldn’t say no, could you?” Jacen glances at Kylo’s training saber, and feels the sore spot on his leg. He doesn’t have to say it, they both remember. _Just because some maniac broke your legs, doesn’t mean you need to do it to me._

That pulls Kylo to here and now. “I… don’t know. I cut the fucker in half, so at least once I managed it, but I don’t know how much of the rest was me doing what he wanted. And I’m not afraid for you, not like that. You aren’t… evil. But, I am afraid that you’ll… Be who you are.” Jacen doesn’t like that, so Kylo quickly adds, “And it’s not bad or wrong or anything like that. It’s just… Young. Inexperienced. Too-confident. Self-centered in a completely normal and rational sort of way.” Kylo’s quiet for a few moments, and Jacen lets him sort this out. “But for you, it’s dangerous in a way that it’s not for most people. Finn’s got a bad plan. The people around him can smack him upside the back of the head and tell him it’s a bad plan. You launch a bad plan. Everyone around you nods and tells you what a great idea it is.”

Jacen’s not thrilled with that, either, but he also knows it’s not wrong. When he came up with the plan to get out of the circus _everyone_ thought it was splendid. And… maybe if someone who wasn’t fourteen had done the planning, more of them would have gotten to the Order recruiting center alive.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to hear that either. Not now, not then, not ever. It’s still true. The more power you have, the harder it is to take good advice, the harder it is to get it, and the more damage you can do by not taking it.”

They’re both quiet, because Jacen knows that the only thing he can do to prove he’s worth this is grow up, and it’s the only thing he _can’t_ make himself do any faster than he already is.    

Kylo pulls his saber to hand. “Luke didn’t much like teaching us this. Working with the droid to deflect shots was fine, but letting us fight each other made him very nervous. I think it’s useful, not… Just because I use it as a way to burn through the dark, twisty thoughts, but because it’s an exercise in discipline and patience. It’s about being aware of who’s around you, and what they’re doing. It’s… figuring out what’s coming, and learning to trust your instincts.”

“You want to train up my empathy by fighting?”

“That’s how I’d do it. It doesn’t have to be how you do it. But… Let’s… find a way that works, for both of us, to work on that. When you can reliably get a feel for the emotions, not just thoughts, of the people around you, we’ll start working more on your voice control. Is that… a good compromise?”

“It’s… frustrating.”

“I know. I can feel it.”

Jacen snorts at that.

“If you want to work on a wrist blade… I have one… It’s…”

“Who’s the ginger?” Jacen can see who Kylo’s thinking about. The man he took that blade off of. “Oh… Shit… Uh…” He looks deeply disturbed. And how Kylo took it.

Kylo nods. “It’s complicated. But, if you want it, I’ll fetch it for you. Though, speaking of things that you can hurt yourself really badly with. This is very much a train up on other weapons first sort of thing. One mistake with that, and you’ll have a prosthetic hand.”

“He wasn’t a fighter.” Jacen’s still seeing Kylo’s image of taking that blade off of Hux’s corpse.

“No. He was a killer. He’s probably personally responsible for more death than anyone else in the galaxy. That’s Armitage Hux, the man who designed Starkiller, and fired it. That’s what that blade is for. Killing people. You don’t defend with it. It won’t deflect a hit. It’s, as you said, the last-ditch weapon. It was his last-ditch weapon, too. The only downside, for him, was that when he got to his last breath, it was a fight, against me, and I knew he had that blade. I knew I couldn’t stop the blade, but I could stop the arm it was on, and that worked just as well.”

“I can only see the sheath in your memory.”

“It’s a mono-molecular blade. All you’ll ever see is the sheath. It’s so sharp, the person you hit with it will be dead before they can feel the cut.” Kylo can feel the wave of interest off of Jacen. “It’s also so sharp, your hand will be on the floor before you know you’ve cut yourself. I’m really not kidding about the prosthetic.” He glances at the chrono. “You’re due back home soon, right?”

Jacen rolls his eyes at that. “Yeah. Rey’s put me on the kitchen duty rounds. Apparently, I’m grown-up enough for that.”

Kylo smirks at that. “Luke did that to me, too. Old enough to make sure the kids don’t burn the place down or poison themselves, not old enough to go out into the world alone. Shockingly enough, I was not thrilled with that decision.”

Jacen does chuckle at that. He also checks the chrono. “Yeah, I’ve got to get moving if I want a shower before dinner.”

Kylo reaches out, and a moment later they’re in the cottage Jacen shares with Critt. “Next time we train, I’ll have the blade, and something to start training with one.”

“Okay. Uh… Chewie and Finn are taking me out, so it’s going to be a few days.”

Kylo’s not sure how he feels about that. He didn’t expect a wave of annoyed jealousy.

“You’re projecting. Even I can feel that.”

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Enjoy it. I’ve been told she’s awfully sweet to fly. Looks like a pile of shit, but handles smooth like…” He pauses and thinks about how his father felt about flying the _Falcon_ , about the words Han didn’t say, because they were completely inappropriate for the seven-year-old who desperately wanted to learn to fly. The ones that didn’t make any real sense to Ben, though he remembered them, likely because they didn’t make any sense to him. By the time he was Kylo, more than a decade later, he did understand, and they made him distinctly uncomfortable. _Like wet lips on a hard shaft._ Now… well, he’s flown more than a few fine ships over the years, and had some lips on his shaft, and… now he gets it.

So, he says the same thing Han did, “oiled silk.”

Jacen smirks at that, too.

 

 

* * *

There’s a knock on the refresher door, and Critt’s voice, “You decent in there?”

“Sure,” Jacen says as he rinses his toothbrush, whacking the control panel that opens the door with his Force. Once it slides open, and Critt steps in, he says, “Thought you had company tonight.”

“Nah. You’re heading off early tomorrow, wanted the chance to say goodbye.”

Jacen smiles at that, as Critt grabs his own toothbrush and gets to it.

“You look tired.” Ever since Rey got him doing some healing, Critt’s been way more in tune with how everyone’s physical bodies are doing. It’s like that one moment found a huge balance point for him, and he’s suddenly leaping forward in his Force use development. Sometimes that’s good. A week ago a cold started to go around the town, and Critt killed that fucker _fast._ Other times… Jacen’s just glad that Critt’s got fuck all for empathy or telepathy, otherwise things would get really complicated, fast.

“Didn’t get to sleep until late.” He gives Critt a long stare. “Someone was being _loud._ ”

Because of his dark skin, it’s difficult for most people to tell that Critt blushes very easily. Jacen doesn’t need to see the blush to feel it. His empathy isn’t great, but… This close, with someone he likes this much… It’s there.

“Shit, sorry. Thought you were asleep.”

He shrugs. He was asleep, at first. Woke up rock hard, somewhat confused, and it took a moment to sort out what was dream and what was Savarah and Critt having a great time. “It happens. Not your fault I can hear things I shouldn’t.”

“My fault we were in our living room.”

“Magiit had Elias over?” The two oldest girls share a cottage. Unlike Jacen and Critt, their’s is one large space, with the cooker on the one end and the beds on the other. Why they didn’t set it up as several rooms, Jacen doesn’t know, but they didn’t.

“Yeah. And… We thought you were asleep. Didn’t mean to…” 

Jacen waves that off, and again thanks the Force, the stars, and any and all gods who may be looking down on him that Critt is someone he _can_ lie to. “You’ve got the place to yourself for a few days, going to take advantage of it?”

Critt grins. “I really hope so, but…”

“But?” Jacen’s leaning against the sink, looking at his friend, wishing, desperately, that he felt, thought the way he’s thinking about Savarah about him, but… He doesn’t. He never has and never will. They’re friends. And Critt does love him. He _knows_ that. Part of why he hasn’t run away is the fact that it’s abundantly clear that Critt would miss him, and that he enjoys being with him, and he _loves_ him.

But not the way Jacen wants him to.

And that fucking burns.

This fucking burns, too. But… Critt loves him, and he… wants to be worthy of that. So, “But… Come on, talk to me.”

Critt looks a little like he’s not sure if this is supposed to be a secret. Then he thinks a bit more, realizes that it couldn’t be, after all, if Jacen hadn’t slapped the chrono without opening his eyes and rolling right back over, he’d have _seen_ Savarah in bed next to Critt, and says, “She slept over last night.”

Jacen hadn’t known that. Apparently, he must have actually fallen asleep at some point. Actually, that makes a lot of sense. He might have dreamed a lot of what he ‘heard.’ “Was it good?”

“Yeah. It’s…” Critt’s got a dreamy smile on his face. “Good. Really good. But we didn’t… you know. Just… And then slept.”

“Critt, I can hear the words you aren’t saying. So, you might as well just say them, okay?”

Critt shrugs. “I want to. A _lot._ And, like, all the time.”

 _Fuck,_ Jacen knows _all about_ that.

“And she does, too, but…” He sighs, and scowls at his toothbrush, as if it’s what caused the problems. “Those lessons are still there, you know? The things Kylo talked about, don’t give in, and don’t want, and be passive and calm, and let the Force provide for your needs, and… And she got it worse. The Bishops told them they’d be punished for all eternity for fucking if they didn’t marry first. And… We _know_ it’s not… real, you know?”

“I know. But it is, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. So…” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “That’s… limiting. There’s what we want, and where we’re comfortable, and where we want to be, but… It doesn’t feel right, yet.”

“Then wait.”

“I don’t want to wait! What if I can’t get rid of it? What if it never feels right, because… I’m supposed to be some calm, celibate Jedi off meditating his wants away, and disciplining himself with the Force.”

Jacen hates the fact that part of him preens at this, because it means Critt’s not going to be fucking Savarah anytime soon.

“You know that’s shit.”

“I do, but…”

“Yeah. I know. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. Sooner or later, it will. I’m sure of that.” He rolls his eyes savagely. _Now_ he gets a fucking flash of the future. “That wedding Rey and Kylo are talking about. We’re going to be there. You and her and a beach and starlight and bonfires. Romance overload. It’s _going_ to feel right. Just… give it time.” The shape of another flash, not as real, or shaped, but... “And use the damn slicks. I’m too young to be an Uncle.”

Critt laughs at that, and then smiles at Jacen, and hugs him. “I’m gonna miss you.”

 

 

Jacen holds on just a hair too tight and a second too long. Then he steps back. “I’m only going to be gone a few days.” _This time._ He’s fairly sure he _can’t_ keep doing this.

It hurts.

But that hurt buys him hugs, and Critt looking at him like he’s awesome, and…

_Run away._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this made me snerk. My kids are watching a tv show, imported from Japan I think, (it's some sort of animae) and one of the characters is named Maomao. You wanna talk about *not* laughing out loud?
> 
> Anyway, happy Saturday, loves!


	36. Training Day: The Pilot

3/21/2

They’re a billion klicks from anything. Light years beyond the nearest system.

Just Jacen, Chewie, Finn, a passle of Porgs. (And fuck, if he thought Critt and Savarah petting away all night was annoying, sharing a bunk with the fucking porgs is just… Ugh! Okay, yes, it’s hazing, and yes, tonight Chewie will magically find somewhere other than his bunk for them to go, but… Yuck! He really liked that shirt, and Porg chewing is not improving it any, and it’s not like there’s anywhere on Lirium to get a new one. Maybe there’ll be time for shopping on this trip. He did bring his credit stick, just in case.)

And space as far as the eye can see, and well beyond.

_All right kid. Open her up!_

Chewie’s in the co-pilot seat. He’s cool, collected, a little smug. He’s heard Jacen talk about the flying pile of junk, but it’s clear that he’s enjoying what he knows is going to happen next. Finn’s in one of the passenger seats behind, nervous. These days he can pilot, but he doesn’t enjoy doing it. He’s a lot happier in the gunner’s tower, or on the ground making deals. That said, he’d rather be flying the _Falcon_ than sitting back there hoping Jacen actually knows what the fuck he’s doing with this ship.

Jacen lays his hand on the throttle and thinks about what Kylo didn’t say. What his father didn’t say to him. That opening the _Falcon_ up and letting her fly was smooth as lips sliding over a wet shaft.

He eases the throttle forward, feels that half a heartbeat where the engines catch, and… all the air in the ship pulls into his lungs in a deep shuddering breath, and a sound highly reminiscent of the one that slipped out of his mouth two years ago when Billy Pryce got down on his knees and made his year falls out of Jacen’s mouth.

Another shuddering breath, while he puts the _Falcon_ through turns tighter, faster, and more precise than anything he’s ever done before.

Chewie’s sitting next to him, _beaming._

After half an hour and ninety-thousand klicks, Jacen says, “Oh baby, I take back every mean thing I ever said about you! Chewie, I love her!”

Chewie settles back against his seat, hands behind his head, satisfied smirk on his face. Then he says, _Good, now do something useful. H’Rada system. Plot the course and take us there._

“Yes, sir!”

Apparently, Chewie likes _that_ , too.

 

 

* * *

“So, what’s in the H’Rada system?” Jacen asks an hour later. This part of the trip is kind of dull. The course is plotted, the _Falcon_ is doing its thing, Chewie and Finn are playing Dejarik, and Jacen’s supposedly “studying.” They’ve got him reading up on the _Falcon’s_ specs, so if needs be, he can jackleg mechanic, but…

He’s not a mechanic, he’s a pilot.

 _First and foremost, fuel._ Chewie says.

“Leads,” Finn adds. “Jobs. Things that have to go from one place to another.”

_Don’t fly with an empty hold. H’Rada has fuel, and often cargo, so that’s the first stop._

“From there, we see what needs to go where, spend a day or so reading up, and then plot a course that’ll hopefully result in a full hold, and credits in the account, each step of the way.”

Jacen nods at that. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

“On this run, mostly sit quiet, watch and learn," Finn says.

_Don’t talk._

“I’m good at talking.”

“Yeah, we know.” Finn says, “But shut it until you learn some more.”

Jacen rolls his eyes, but… Finn’s not wrong, he’s _learning._

 

 

* * *

Jacen supposes that, to a degree, all space ports have to look somewhat similar. A long, flat spot to plant the ships. Machines for mechanics to work on the ships. Fuel slugs creeping through delivering fuel. Mechanics in greasy, dirty coveralls, and pilots, many of whom are also in greasy, dirty coveralls swarming those ships, working on them.

Sort of like how every restaurant kitchen has to, on some level, look, more or less, the same. It’s there for a reason, and the things that allow it to do that are all the same.

Still, it’s only the third port he’s been in, and he mostly wants to just stand around and gawk. Talk about finding the balance point. This feels _good._ He’s not going to be a mechanic. He knows that, but he can feel how being one of the pilots, the legions of guys in jumpsuits, or swaggering around in… It’s not a uniform, but he’s got more of a sense of why Poe dresses the way he does. A LOT of men and women here are in slim trousers, blaster tied down shootist-style on the hip, and leather jackets.

Plus, the swagger of the place. It _feels_ good in here. His kind of good. And, again, empathy may not be his strong suit, but this many people projecting _this much_ of an image...

Yeah, he feels it.

And is, apparently, responding to it. Pulling himself up, swaggering along, wishing he had a leather jacket, too.

“Walk small,” Finn says to him, out of the corner of his mouth. Though Jacen’s noticed he, too, has acquired something of a scoundrel’s swagger, too.

 

 

“Why?” Most everyone else is strutting around here. This is very much not the sort of place where walking small is going to get you any slack.

“Because you are the small one here.”

Jacen gets what Finn is saying. He wants to make sure that people know they’re dealing with _him_ and not _Jacen._ And he knows why. “I’m taller than you are.”

“I’m older.” Finn’s voice is pointed. But between the height, and the beard, and the fucking voice command, he’s not sure if they will deal with him over Jacen.

“By what, five years?”

Finn squints at Jacen. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seven. And don’t forget it.” Jacen gets a flash of the conversation Finn’s trying not to think about. This is, apparently, the first time Finn’s been out on one of these runs, in charge of things, on his own. Chewie’s been letting him do all the talking for a while, but… It’s _easy_ to make a deal when you’ve got 2.3 meters of seen-everything-and done-it-all-wookie standing behind you.

With a bowcaster.

And a reputation even bigger than he is.

It’s not just Jacen who’s training here, it’s Finn, too.

“That’s barely older,” Jacen says. He shouldn’t. Finn’s nervous and doesn’t want to fuck this up. He’s got this untested, unknown kid by his side, and after a bit more than a year, Chewie’s finally letting him scope and make the deals on his own. Jacen mentally rolls his eyes, and draws himself in. He’s not slouching, but he does shift his posture and attitude a bit. “Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Where are we going?”

“Dam’s cantina. There’s usually something going on there. Stick close, okay?”

“Glued to your ass.”

Finn looks slightly startled at that. “Maybe not that close, okay?”

Jacen smirks at him. “The blaster for show, or is this the kind of place you might need it?”

“Mostly for show.”

“Why don’t I have one, then?”

“ _Mostly._ And, because I know when to pull one, and you don’t.”

Jacen shrugs a bit, deciding that, to a degree, that’s fair enough. He's fairly sure that he's a  _much_ better judge of if someone around them is a serious threat than Finn is, but Finn's likely better at reading a whole room than he is. He glances at the blaster and rolls his eyes at himself. He's getting caught up in the image of this. Among other things, Jacen doesn’t know how to shoot, so… “Lead on, Master Tico.”

And Finn does.

 

 

* * *

The hanger is _not_ Jacen’s place.

It was close to his place.

But it wasn’t his place.

 _This_ is his place.

Dam’s. It’s a hive of scum and villainy and people who make their fortunes by their mouths and wits and guts and… He _loves_ it in here. It’s _almost_ as good as opening up the _Falcon._

It’ll be better when he’s allowed to be something other than Finn’s shadow. But right now, this is good. They sidle up to the bar, and Finn orders for both of them. He’s not thrilled with the cider that Finn gets him, but… Well, that was the downside of asking silently for rum in his coffee, Finn doesn’t know he can handle at least one drink.

But he can.

Finn takes his, turns his back to the bar, and scans the crowd. He’s watching everyone around them, and Jacen takes a sip of his drink. Not only is it cider, it’s shit cider. This is probably half water, a quarter beer, and a quarter cider. Cheap as hell.

_You can hear me like this, right?_

Jacen also watches the crowd. _Yes, you getting this back?_

Finn blinks. _Yes._

_Lovely. What?_

_I’m only swallowing every third or fourth time. I’ll spill a little later. When I get to the second or third one, I’ll keep my movements loose and slur a little. People here think I’m something of a drunk, but it helps the deals go down._

_I can keep the lie going. So, what’s up first?_

_To your left. Connor McDall. He’s going to show up. Not sure how long he’s gonna take, sometimes it’s right away, sometimes it’s hours, but he’ll be by. You’re going to listen quietly. I’m gonna talk._

Jacen nods, and watches.

 

 

* * *

It’s a matter of seconds. Finn’s barely finished thinking it when McDall’s ushering them over to a table.

“Where’s your partner?” McDall asks Finn once they sit down at one of the tables tucked into the nooks around the outside perimeter at Dam’s.

“Tending to the bird.”

“You have a kid when we weren’t looking?” He’s watching Jacen, and wondering who he is, and why he’s here, and if that mark means what he thinks it does.

“Connor, this is Jacen. Chewie and I are thinking of bringing him on.”

“Why’s that?” He’s fairly sure the tattoo is a bond mark, and now he’s wondering if Chewie decided to buy a kid.

“I’m a pilot.”

Connor looks surprised. “Young one.” His eyes narrow, and glance to the tattoo. _Runaway._ Taking on a runaway is the sort of move Chewie would make. Lot of shared history there. He’s wondering if there’s a bounty on Jacen, and if it might be high enough to risk burning Chewie. Slaves with skills are valuable, though… And pilots even more so.

“Last I checked, we all start out this way,” Jacen says, and makes Connor stop thinking about checking into his past and if he’s wanted anywhere. He’s not, or at least shouldn’t be. Anyone who’d want to make a claim on his bond is dead, or at least broken, now. Still, he’s almost wishing he had an Order hex on him, something to show that he’s not bound any longer.

Connor smirks at that, and Jacen can see Finn relax. He’s okay with this, as long as he stays quiet when he’s not being directly addressed.

Finn takes another sip of his drink, and then says, “So, we’re all introduced, what’s the deal? I know you didn’t call us over just to catch up and be social.”

McDall sips his own drink, and then grins. “It’s a good one.” And then he explains.

Jacen does his job. He sits. He listens, and he _listens._ And once McDall is done speccing out the job, he thinks to Finn. _Pass on that one, it’s hot._

Finn smiles, looks like he’s thinking about it, maybe calculating the base cost in his head, as he thinks back, _Jacen, three quarters of what we deal in is stolen. And everything we’re going to get here is hot._

Jacen glances at the empty mugs, picks up all three of them, and heads for the bar. It’ll be a lot less noticeable how closely he’s focused on Finn and their mental conversation if his back is to them.

 _I know that. It’s_ hot. _Stolen from the Order, and they’re looking for it. The theft went bad and they caught some of the guys on the job. That’s why he’s offering so much for it. Whoever gets caught with it is going to die, and the time to getting caught is getting slim._

Finn nods again. “That’s less than a third of the cost. We take that off your hands, we’re going to need 250,000. In specie.”

McDall looks like he just bit into a chocolate covered turd. “Chewie never asks for specie.”

“Chewie’s not here right now, is he?”

McDall doesn’t like that. His eyes narrow and he’s eyeing Finn. He’s wondering if Finn’s on his own the first time, and showing off. “What’s your game Tico?”

Finn leans back in the booth and rolls his eyes at McDall. “We watch the newsies all the damn time looking for good deals. You honestly want to believe I don’t know what you’re doing? You want to get that off planet before the Order shows up and shoots your ass, you’re gonna pay, and pay a lot, and pay in specie. Otherwise, we’ve got to be just about fueled up, and getting out of here soon is probably a good plan.”

Conner doesn’t wince. His face doesn’t shift at all. Jacen does make sure to note that word he just thought and look it up when he gets home, because it’s one hell of a curse.

Jacen comes back with the refills and passes them around.

Connor takes one more sip, and then says, voice annoyed. “If you’ve figured out what it is, why are you willing to touch it?”

Finn holds up a hand, and then strips off his jacket and shirt. Then he turns around. Apparently, Jacen’s not the only one sporting an impressive scar on his back. “Got some history with the First Order, and Ren. Wouldn’t mind tweaking his nose. You make it worth the risk, I’ll take it.”

_What the fuck are you doing?_

“I can do half in specie and half in credits.”

“No deal.” He’s putting his shirt back on. “I’m willing to risk my skin to get rich. I’m not about to do it with numbers that can be tracked.”

McDall looks pained. “That’s every cento I’ve got in specie, and passing a plate around the guys in here to get over the line.”

“I’ll stake you a plate.” Finn’s got his jacket on.

“Tico, you’re killing me.”

“I’m not doing anything. The Order’s the one gonna kill you if you sit on this shit. They got a tracker on it?”

“Not anymore.”

Jacen sips his drink. _He’s telling that bit true. At least, as well as he knows._

“But when they get to wherever it died, figuring out it ended up here won’t take a genius.”

McDall doesn’t bother trying to cover that. He knows it’s true, Finn knows it’s true, and so does Jacen. “Yeah.”

“You know the price, take it or leave it.”

Connor’s thinking. Finn puts his drink down, and Jacen does likewise. He starts to leave, and Jacen follows. They’re almost out the door, one more step, and out.

_What was that?_

_Wait for it._

Five steps, ten. A large man bumps into Finn, doesn’t apologize, and staggers off. Finn pulls a key out of his pocket.

“In an hour there’ll be a satchel in this locker. It’ll have the credits and the goods.” _And now’s probably a really good time to get a hold of Rey and figure out what the fuck to do with this shit so the Order doesn’t shoot us out of the sky._

* * *

“Chewie, how good is the code on the _Falcon?_ ” Finn asks, moving fast as soon as he and Jacen are out of sight, up the ramp.

_Ours are okay, and I’ve still got Leia’s personal codes if we need better than okay._

Finn blinks, and then remembers something. Remembers Chewie finding out from Padme if Rey was okay. “You know how to get a message directly to Kylo, right?”

Chewie sighs. _Don’t exactly love using that._

“Yeah, well…” And then he explains how they’re about to get very well paid for a very fast, straight run, if they can make sure the Order shows up _after_ they get off this planet, and not _before._

Chewie decides that’s worth sending a note for.

 

* * *

Sixteen minutes later, in Leia’s code, in written Shariwook, they get back: _You’ve got 73 minutes until troopers land. Bring it to Lirium, and I’ll pay you for it._

 

* * *

Jacen watches Finn and Chewie. They’re thinking. Looking at the fuel tank. Thinking through when that locker is most likely to be full.

“It’s cutting it close,” Finn says. He knows asking for specie means that getting the cash in one place is going to take time.

Chewie agrees. _You got it in specie?_

“If this key leads to what I think it does. If they can find enough cash. If they actually put it in the locker. We’re not going to have time to count up before we run.”

“But, they’d have to put enough in to at least look like there’s money in there, right?” Jacen says.

“Yeah, but they could probably get away with a half or third of the asking price.”

Chewie tilts his head to the side, pondering.  _So, we’re not totally fucked if it goes tits up._

“Just… one fewer place we can do business.”

It’s clear neither of them like that.

Really don’t like that. Still, a job is a job.

Jacen feels it when they settle into the idea. “You’re going to take it to Seti Tau?” he asks. He’s… stunned. If Kylo’ll pay for it if they take it home. And if they’ve already gotten paid to take to to Seti Tau. This… Is a no-brainer. They’ll get double paid by taking it back to Lirium.

_That’s the deal kid. We’re getting paid to take it to Seti Tau._

“We’d get paid to take it to Lirium. It’s a good deal. No more fuel than you’d use otherwise. We’re back home sooner than expected. Rose is happy. And we get paid. Twice! This is a good deal.”

Chewie offers up a subvocal growl.

Finn sighs and begins to explain, _patiently._ “We are being paid to get this out of here and over to Seti Tau. If we don’t do that, we can’t come back here for another job. We want jobs after this one, too, Jacen. If this doesn’t get to Seti Tau, McDall’ll spread the word, and that will burn us.”

“But if they don’t put enough specie in there?” Jacen asks.

“I can promise you that if they don’t, the rest of our asking price, likely plus ten percent will be in our account. He’ll take the tarnish of not paying in specie, he won’t take the rot of not paying period,” Finn replies.

Jacen’s not loving that. “Say the Order got close and you had to jettison it. If you can’t sell the lie, I can. No harm, no foul, let me do the talking, and I promise you won’t have to give back more than half of the shipping money, everyone is good, we all get paid.”

That gets another sigh. Chewie’s rubbing his forehead. Finn’s doing his best not to look at Jacen.

He can feel what they’re thinking. “Look, it’s stupid not to do business with Kylo. Not if you can get away with it, and this one, I can _make sure_ you get away clean on that. It’s not like we’re smuggling vaccines or food or something. The guys on the other end aren’t going to die if they don’t get these transmitters. If they were, they’d have come here to get them themselves, not hoped someone could be roped into bringing them along.”

He can feel Finn wavering. Then his eyes narrow. His thoughts aren’t complimentary.

“I’m not doing it! I’m just arguing with you and making sense. I actually know how to be persuasive, too, you know?”

“That’s even more of a kick in the ass. How long do we have?”

_Sixty-nine minutes._

“I’ll hit the locker. Get us ready to go. If it’s not there in fifty, we’re out of here, okay?”

 _That’s_ a plan they can all agree with.

 

* * *

There’s not much to do while they wait for Finn.

Chewie double checks the hyperdrive, makes sure it’s in tip top shape. Jacen makes sure the fuel is properly topped off, and then… There’s just sitting around.

Finally, he says, “Okay, I don’t get it, why not sell to Kylo, and don’t give me the we can’t come back here stuff, I can fix that. Is it just because he’s… Kylo?” Jacen asks as soon as Finn’s out.

Chewie sighs a bit, growls a bit, and then says, _Look no one in our business likes The Order. Kylo’s got some bright boys somewhere who pulled a metric ton of shit, and that’s making business hard for us._

Jacen looks confused. “I thought… Didn’t the Order back off on contraband, and open travel lanes, and… they’re taking out raiders and…”

 _And cut our profit margins to the bone. We’re_ smugglers _kid. We move goods that aren’t supposed to move through places they aren’t supposed to go to people who aren’t supposed to get them. Under the Empire something like ninety-thousand goods were illegal, and half of everything else had its price marked up like five hundred percent on value added taxes._

He can see he’s lost Jacen who isn’t making the connections that are obvious to Chewie, and anyone else in his game.

 _There’s always a market for illegal goods. And it’ll be a good one. An_ expensive one. _Because illegal shit is dangerous to carry around. High risk, high reward. Under the Empire a lot of the illegal stuff was small, easy to carry, not particularly dangerous unless you ingested it in too large a quantity, and that made for good payoffs for people like me. Now, the only stuff the Order still has banned is big, dangerous no matter what, difficult to move, and generally speaking, the kind of people who want it aren’t the kind of people you want to sell it to. Han and I never had any problem hooking up the local recreational pharmacologist with goodies to sell. That business is gone. If I still want to move illegal shit, it means taking more Rathnors and the like, and they’re just… shit to move._

Jacen nods. “Too high of a risk for the available reward.”

_Exactly._

“Taxes?”

_Best thing that ever happened to me and mine is a value added tax. It’s a fucking goldmine for smugglers. Mine the shit out of the planet, pay a tax on it. Ship it to somewhere to refine it, pay a tax on it. Ship the refined stuff to a factory to make parts out of it, pay a tax on it. Ship the parts to a manufacturer to make something out of the parts, pay a tax on it. Ship the finished thing to a market, pay a tax on it. Buy it from the market, pay a tax on it. Any time anyone did anything that ‘added value’ to a thing, they had to pay a tax on it. And once it was finished and went to market, they paid a sales tax on top of that._

_Any step of that where I provide the transportation, and some forged tax stickers, everyone’s better off. Especially me._

“The Order doesn’t do a value added tax?”

_Right. Some fucknut in the Order said, ‘Hey, how about we just charge a straight tonnage fee for anything that moves through our space,’ and suddenly it’s only a few centos per credit more expensive to do it legally than illegally, so most people opt for legal. Which means half of my, and everyone else in this business’s trade vanished overnight. A third of it was moving illegal shit from place to place. There’s still local markets for that, and, like you see, there’s always a market for stolen goods, but used to be, I could lay hands on… Cigarras for example, and run them from one side of the galaxy to the other, and make bank on them. Now, you can just buy them in the local apothecary, and respectable fuckwits ship them with medipacks and vitamins for the cost of fuel and 5% markup._

_Taking out the raiders means the risk of any given trip is gone. Means the cost is lower. You don’t need a ship as fast and nimble as mine to get through any part of Order controlled space, because you’re never more than a call away from someone who’ll show up with a billion tons of firepower to absolutely crush any raider who tries to lay a hand on you._

_When Han and I started in this game, under the Empire, there were millions of these little ports all over the galaxy. Since the Order showed up and made taking shit from place to place safer and less expensive… Everyone is going legit._

“You and Finn?”

Chewie looks positively heartbroken. _Yeah, any given day now, we’re moving legit goods, too. It’s boring, the profits are minuscule, barely enough to have a good time after maintenance and wages are paid._

“Wait, you pay wages?” That floors Jacen. He never actually thought about what Finn gets out of this arrangement.

_Yeah. Keep the ship moving, first. Pay yourself, next. Every month. Then we pay anyone we owe. If there’s anything left after that, we sometimes pay our taxes. Doesn’t hurt to have a few legit entries in our books. Then, if there’s anything left, we split it._

“So… You don’t want to sell to Kylo because… he’s unintentionally fucking your business by making it easier to legally trade stuff?”

Chewie grows at that.

“Huh.”

_You catch what we’re getting for this run?_

Jacen nods. “Oh yeah.”

_If that wasn’t stolen cargo, and if the Order wasn’t hot on our tail, that run would get us less than a tenth of that price. You can live on that, but not well._

“Oh.”

 

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Finn ambles on in, a satchel over his shoulder, pulling a hand truck behind him.

“Punch it, Chewie.”

Forty-six minutes later, space bends into streaks of light as the zoom into the sky.

As Chewie and Finn are counting up the specie, Jacen notices that they’re on route to Seti Tau, but he doesn’t say anything. Wether he will, to Kylo, later, is something he’ll think about.

He does have one question though. “Uh, once the Order tosses Dam's looking for their stuff, are they going to be hot on our ass when they realize it’s not there?”

Finn smirks.

Chewie grins.

“They’re certainly going to try,” Finn looks really pleased with that.

 _Rose has a few tricks up her sleeve._ Chewie adds.

“And one of those tricks is…” He hits another button. A soft _kerrthwack_ sound rattles through the _Falcon,_ followed by the pressure of lightspeed pushing them back into their seats. “Can’t launch it in lightspeed, but once it’s off, hop away, fast.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a scrambler decoy. Won’t last too long, but once it picks up anything using Order frequencies, it’ll bounce them around and fuck ‘em up for two hours. More than long enough to make sure there’ll be nothing of us for them to track.”

“That’s what Rose builds when she’s in the workshop?”

Finn smiles. “Smart, beautiful, and good with her hands. I got the whole package when I married her, kid.”

 

 

* * *

“So, what’s the plan?” Jacen asks as they’re heading toward Seti Tau.

“For this one, we’re just dropping it off. We take proof of receipt, and we’re done.”

Jacen’s got a curious look on his face. Receipts are also not part of how he understands this job. It’s apparently more complicated than fly fast and look cool.

“So, if McDall decides to fuss about us not getting the job done, we’ve got proof we did it," Finn replies.

Jacen nods.

Chewie’s coming along for this part. Not everyone likes to give a receipt, and well, maybe they don’t like it, but they rarely tell him to fuck off.

_Then we settle in for a bit, do some research, see what’s cheap here and expensive somewhere else. That’s the kind of legit goods we take._

“Ish,” Finn says. “Usually if it’s really cheap somewhere, and expensive somewhere else, it’s gonna be illegal somewhere else, but, at least en route, we’re not carrying hot stuff.”

_For right now, research, though._

“And we do it in a place other traders can see us, so if they want to drop by for a chat, we’re ready to talk.”

“So… you sit around in a bar, sipping a drink, reading the newsies?” Jacen’s not sure if this is the coolest job ever, or the most boring.

 _Pretty much, actually._  

 

 

* * *

They’re still an hour out when Finn settles next to Jacen. For a moment, he’s just _looking._ At least, that’s what it looks like from the outside. It’s not how Jacen understands it, so he answers the unasked question.

“It’s like listening to a conversation on the far side of the wall. If the neighbors are yelling, it’s really easy. If you’ve got something else to pay attention to it’s easy to ignore. Sometimes, you leave the house, and you can’t hear it at all.”

Finn blinks slowly. “Do you… hear it… like… words?”

“Sometimes,” Jacen says. “Or I’ll catch images. Depends on how you think. Most people think in images, so I usually get it that way. Some think in sounds and words, so for them that’s how I get it.”

Chewie looks up from the newsie he’s reading. _How’s the leaving part work?_

Jacen shrugs. “Just like leaving the house… I can’t get a sense of what anyone back home is thinking right now because I’m too far away." He thinks about that. "Okay, if I really focused on someone back home, I could probably get it, but... People I know well, you know? You two, less than two meters away, focused on me, me focused on you, are very bright and clear.”

“So, you just… feel everything we’re thinking?”

Jacen shakes his head. “I can but generally don’t. You speak galactic standard and have made it clear you don’t like me in your head. So, I ignore you as much as I can, and we talk to communicate. Mostly. You sitting down and staring at me while wondering about me isn’t something I can ignore. Chewie’s different. I don’t actually speak Kashyycistan or whatever, so I’ve got to focus hard on Chewie to follow what he’s saying. I get enough images from him that I’m okay at figuring out what he’s saying.

_Shariwook._

“Yeah, that meant nothing to me.”

“He speaks Shariwook, not Kashyycistan.”

Jacen files that away. “And that’s the sort of thing that you won’t have an image for, and the word means nothing to me because I don’t speak the language he thinks in.”

Chewie and Finn stare at each other.

“What happens if you’re in a crowd?” Finn asks.

“I learned young to get good at ignoring it. Especially when it’s not aimed at me, tuning it out is fairly easy. If you can’t keep the voices quiet or filter them out, especially in groups, you go insane.”

And Chewie and Finn suddenly know that Jacen isn’t exaggerating or speaking metaphorically.

He shrugs a bit. “Mum couldn’t block it out. Other than he or one of his kin must have had red hair, they don’t know who my dad is. My mom was locked up at the time. She couldn’t make the voices shut up, and Kylo thinks she could probably feel what they were feeling, too. Granda said a few things that back that up over the years.

“That’s a bad combination, if you can’t control it.

“I just get the thoughts, unless I work at it, or the situation is right. That’s easier, I guess. She had both sides of it, and she’d hurt herself to try and make it stop. I think they kept her very heavily drugged. She, obviously, was not supposed to get pregnant in there. Granda took her home, but we lived in a city, and shortly after I was born, she killed herself. At least, that’s what he said. I don’t remember it. I think he was lying. He could shield his own thoughts, and when I was young, I could only get impressions, not full thoughts. He knew I had a lot of her ‘gifts’ and thought it would be less scary than telling me that she had to go off to live completely alone, away from everyone else, even me, because it was the only way for her to find any peace.

“He was a good man.” Jacen looks sad about that. “I was twelve when he died.” He smiles a bit, but it’s a sad smile. Chewie lays his hand on Jacen’s shoulder and nods at him.  

 

 

* * *

They’re in sight of Seti Tau when Finn says, “You gonna tell Ren where his stuff ended up?”

Jacen shrugs. He _knows_ there are a lot of intense feelings there, and he can see how Finn thinks of Kylo, so he can _assume_ what they likely are, but he doesn’t _know_ what they are. “You going to ask me not to?”

“They’re hot goods, and we’ll tell ‘em why they’re hot, so they can’t trace the Order showing up to us, but we’re better off with this outpost up and working, you know?”

Jacen inclines his head. “I imagine, if you were to say something like that, he might just send a few people in to _buy_ the stuff back. You might get him thinking in new directions, especially if he’s serious about this trade thing being easier and working better than marching in and stomping everyone’s spines into mush.”

Finn’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t like that.

Jacen pushes a little more. “I get you don’t like—”

Even if Jacen couldn’t read the vibrant _NO_ that arcs through Finn’s head, he reads body language well enough to see the massive wave of defensive posture that leaps into place on Finn’s body. “No, you don’t!”

_Stuff it. Landing soon._

 

 

* * *

Dropping off the goods is a lot less exciting than Jacen had been hoping.

The port. That part is great. Even bigger than the last one, with more ships, more pilots, more… everything. And they walk by several cantinas that look extremely promising. But they keep walking.

And then… Get in a cab… Okay, he’s not talking because he’s trying to look like he knows what the fuck he’s doing, but… They just walked out of the port, past all the seedy deal zones, into the city proper, and got in a hired speeder, and now they’re zooming through a decent sized city, which is nice, but…

And they’re at a… This is a business. Like, a real business. With… a store front, and big glass windows showing off goods, and… middle aged people who look like they’ve got credits are milling around looking at electronics, talking to clerks.

It’s clear that he’s looking perplexed. Chewie doesn’t say anything but he does look at Jacen, and then thinks, _The best way to sell stolen goods is to sell a lot of legit ones, too._

Jacen blinks in understanding.

These are hot transistors. Really hot transistors. Stolen from the Order transistors. Put them in a real store, one that has things like inventory records and shipping manifests and… He nods, slowly.

They’re identical to the transistors anyone else uses, too. If anyone asks, the people who run this place will be able to show that they ordered, received, and bought them legitimately.

They do go around the back, to the loading and unloading bay.

“Chewie!” The man who probably owns the place heads down the back stairs to them, opens his arms wide, and clasps the wookie in a bright hug. “I didn’t know McDall’d gotten you into this.”

Chewie waves that off.

“Right place, right time,” Finn chips in with. Then he pushes the handcart a little further forward, and the man takes the handle.

“My gain, then. It’s always good to have dependable people moving things around.”

Chewie pulls a micro datapad out of his crossbelt, and snaps a quick shot of the man with the goods.

“Extra dependable. They’re Order goods, originally. Make sure you’ve scrubbed ‘em clean before you try to move them," Finn adds.

That gets a raised eyebrow. “How close behind?”

“We got reliable intel that we got out less than an hour before they hit dirt.”

“They got a track on you?” The shop owner asks, starting to look like he’s thinking twice about holding onto these.

“Oh, come on.” Finn smiles wide and Chewie howls in derision at the idea. “We’re fucking ghosts. No one tracks us.”

“I’ve heard that.” The man looks at Jacen. “New friend?”

“Something like that,” Finn says. “New blood, we’re testing him out.”

“Ah.” The man pats the handcart. “Well, I thank you for this.”

“No problems.”

Chewie’s playing with the microdatapad and then nods.

Finn glances at the pad, and nods. “And McDall knows you’ve taken receipt.”

The man nods back, and Chewie gives him another hug, and then they’re leaving.

 

 

* * *

It’s not until they’re back in the _Falcon_ that Jacen says, “That’s it?”

_For this one._

“You don’t talk at these things, either?” Jacen asks.

_He never learned to understand me._

“Is that mostly what Han did, talked to people?”

_I found the good deals, he set them up. I’m a better shot. He was a better pilot. We were… good together._

“Oh.” They’re quiet. “Now what?”

Chewie glances at the chrono. _Eat, sleep. Up and at it in the morning._

 

 

* * *

The _Falcon_ has one refresher. It’s small, has a water shower, because the fuel processing produces water as a side effect of making energy, and that water is always hot, because it’s part of the cooling system.

According to Chewie, it’s one part of this bird that works, reliably, in all situations. Likely because Lando always wanted to be clean and pretty.

Finn’s finishing up his nightly ablutions. He’s in a pair of shorts, and blotting his hair off when Jacen knocks on the door.

“Can’t you hold it?”

“I want to talk.”

Finn hits the door and it slides open. Jacen’s in front of him, in a pair of trousers and a tank top.

He looks down at Finn. “I do get it, you know? I mean, I _get it_ better than anyone you’ve ever met. I can’t feel your fear, but I got to ride along on your memories as you were taking your shirt off. I know how every time you see him, you check your blaster and look for the exits. I know he’s why you still wear a blaster when you’re out and about at home. And I know you do it because you know you can’t win the fight against him. I know what your mental image of him is, and, by the way, it’s off by twenty kilometers. He does _not_ look like that. He’s big and kind of grump, but he’s not _that_ big or mean looking. And he doesn’t even carry the saber around Lirium. He intentionally goes unarmed there these days.

“I know you’re afraid. I know you’re angry. I can see the red tinges of your mental images of that fight.”

Finn’s eyes narrow, and he’s not looking happy about any of this.

“And I know the last thing you want to hear about is how he’s not as bad of a guy as you think he is. So, I’m not trying to convince you to like him. I’m here to make you understand why _I_ do.”

Jacen turns his back to Finn and pulls his shirt off.

The very sharp hiss of an inhaled breath breaks the quiet followed by, “Fuck… Jacen… Shit… You said, but…” Jacen can feel Finn’s eyes trailing over his back. He knows it looks like a collection of spastic snakes were frozen under his skin, except it’s not really skin, not anymore. These days it’s more like shiny pinkish-white leather. It doesn’t hurt him, not anymore. He’s numb from between his shoulder blades to the top third of his buttocks, but he can feel the pain Finn feels at seeing it.

Jacen turns around, and pulls his shirt back on. “They go down to just above the part of your ass you sit on. Like I said, my Granda was a good man. But he died in debt. So, they sold everything but the clothes on my back to pay those debts, and when that didn’t cover it, they sold me.” He offers Finn a bitter smile. “Apparently, the clothing came free, with me.

“They held me down and tattooed me. And I can feel what you’re thinking. Yes, if they’d been people, I could have gotten myself out, even then, but they weren’t. The Petrarchs of Anila figured out a long time ago that people have a soft spot for other people, especially children. The overseers were all droids. Couldn’t be bribed, couldn’t get fond of us, just… followed orders.

“Order the first.” He taps the tattoo on his face. “It’s a special pigment. You can cover it with makeup, but they’ll catch it on their sensors. You can laser it so it’ll fade, but enough’ll be left for the sensors to catch it. Expensive, skilled slaves are always a flight risk, so every space port… You can’t get on a ship without getting scanned. Can’t get into the port without being scanned.

“There is literally no way off planet for anyone with this mark, unless your owner takes you, or you get to an Order recruiting station. And you’ve got to fight to get to Order stations. The Petrarchs won’t risk a direct attack on an Order station, that’s asking to get themselves killed, but they’ve got armed squads patrolling around them.

“I didn’t… Settle in well. Took… persuading, to get into my role. But eventually, I was well-enough trained to be one of the stars of our circus. People’d line up for hours to get to chat with me. And I’m the best damn cold reader anyone’s ever met. I can tell fortunes that’ll make your blood freeze they’re so fucking accurate.”

Finn’s nodding slowly, really looking at Jacen, seeing past him, younger him, and how he was _used._ “You just pulled what they wanted to hear out of their heads.”

He smiles, it’s not happy. “Not always what they _wanted_ to hear.”

“Oh.”

“That got more scars. People who get happy fortunes come back and tell their friends. Sons of bitches who tell slavers that their wives are cheating on them with their best friends, their kids aren’t their own, and the ghosts of their nearest and dearest are rotting in eternal perdition because of their actions get burned.” It’s clear from the look on Jacen’s face that he still thinks some of it was worth it.

“Shit.” Finn’s staring, and Jacen knows what he’s wondering.

“No, I don’t know why I’m not more dark. Possibly because, like Rey’s talked about, if you need to, you can sort of pull your brain out of your head, and have the bad shit just happen to your body. You know it happened, but it’s more like something you’ve read than experienced. Healing up still hurt like a bitch, but they were careful. It’s _just_ skin damage, and they didn’t ever let it get infected. Wouldn’t do if I was too sick to work.”

“Fuck.”

Jacen nods at that. “Exactly. Anyway, I’m fourteen, and I catch a thought about the First Order coming. Ren hadn’t changed it yet, so it still was the First Order then. At first, people are scared that they’re going to destroy the place, and by that point, anything that’d fuck those bastards over is good by me. The First Order could burn that planet to ash, with me on it, and as long as _they_ died, too, I’d be fine with it.”

“How I feel about the First Order.”

“Exactly. Over the next few months I get more and more bits. Ask the right question here and there, make sure they didn’t remember me doing it. But we’re still a thousand klicks from a recruiting station. We move though, new city every week, and then we’re twenty klicks from a station. Next stop, we’ll start moving further away, so this is it. Get caught outside the circus without a pass, and we’re looking at trouble, but… So close. All we have to do is get inside the walls around the First Order compound, and we’re free.

“One day, everyone else at our circus decided that I had a cracking good plan, getting out, running away. We wrapped our show. Closed down for the night. Mr. S8O6 didn’t know what hit him, or anything else, after Turnball, he was the strongman, got done with bashing him to pieces with a hammer. Himnar, the knife and ax thrower, took care of the guards. Hosia, the lead animal handler, took care of the City Watch by starting a stampede. Synthine, the pyromancer, burnt what was left. That gets more of the Watch at the Circus and ties up traffic with the fire response team. Then we ran. Most of us didn’t make it, and I only got over the wall because I could fucking levitate.

“But I can say, even without my persuasion skills, every one of us who got over the wall thought it was worth it.

“So, I guess I got myself out. But Kylo gave me a place to go. So, like I said, I don’t need _you_ to like him. I need you to stop holding it against me that I do.”

Finn nods at that, too. “Look… You weren’t there for the last part of our conversation, and… Probably don’t need to know, and don’t fucking look, okay?”

“I can read the big ‘back the fuck off’ walls you’ve got up.”

“Okay. Fear is… real. Especially in the kind of work we do, paying attention to your fears and acting accordingly is a good way to live a long and healthy life.”

“Okay.”

“But… Fear you can’t act on. Fear that… doesn’t necessarily correspond to now. That’s poison. And… Rose and I talk about it, okay. And I’m… trying. But it’s not going to come fast or easy, and on top of it, I also just don’t _like_ the man. Fucker was born with _everything_ and pissed it all away, and yeah, yeah, yeah, he’ll tell you about _extenuating circumstances_ and some shit like that, but…” Finn rolls his eyes. “But all the extenuating circumstances in the galaxy don’t justify what he did.”

Jacen's just looking at Finn, thinking about the words he's not saying, and finally decides to ask. “’Bought his life at too high a price?’ You’re thinking it loudly, but I don’t know what you mean.”

Finn sighs a little at that. “Sometimes, you’ve got do to shit to survive. I _know_ about that. And I get that he got put in a bad situation. But there’s a point where you roll over and let them kill you rather than keep saving your own life because too many people are dying because you keep saving yours. It’s literal, you bought your life for too high a price. It wasn’t worth the number of people who died to keep you going.”

Jacen thinks about that. “If he’d done that, Snoke would still be in charge.”

“Yeah, that’s what I tell myself when I’m trying to be fair. But I’m not always fair, especially if you’re pulling ideas right out of my head.”

Jacen nods at that, too. “Okay. I’m not always fair in my head, too.”

“Plus, it’s not like he likes me. That man is not going out of his way to… anything, for me. Fucker cut me in half and hasn’t even said sorry about, so…”

Jacen stands there for a moment, and then says, “For whatever it’s worth. The way I am with thoughts. He is with feelings. So, part of why he’s always so tense and pissed and on edge when you’re near is he’s feeling everything you are. And, it’s not like me, where I’m aware of what’s going on in an intellectual sort of way. He _feels_ it. So, he gets near you. Your defenses spike. Even I caught that when you walked into Poe’s ship and there he and Critt were. He absolutely catches the wave of fear, anger, and disgust. Which immediately puts him on defensive. I can’t get what he’s thinking when that happens, because he actually can shield his thoughts and feelings, but I know part of what you’re seeing when he’s near is a mirror of yourself, and part of it is defending himself against those feelings.”

Finn rolls his eyes at that, and mutters something Jacen decides not to be aware of about Force users.

Jacen shrugs a bit at that. “Like I said, I don’t need you to love him. I need you to understand why he’s not the boogeyman in my closet, okay?”

Finn blinks.

Jacen realizes that kids raised by the First Order didn’t have stories of monsters in the closet or under the bed. “It’s a monster that—” Wrong direction, he doesn’t want to spend hours going into how it’s not really a thing, as opposed to some sort of wildlife native to where he grew up. “He’s not my nightmare.”

“Yeah, that’s clear. He’s really not carrying the lightsaber?”

“Not around the settlement. The last time I saw him armed, when we weren’t training, was when Critt’s parents left. He had his saber for that. But Poe had his blaster, and Chewie had his bowcaster and you… Where were you?”

“Here. In the gunner’s tower. That ship wasn’t getting Critt off planet unless he wanted to go.”

“Oh.”

“Unarmed?” Finn asks again.

“As much as a guy who can kill with his body and mind ever is unarmed.”

Finn sighs. “That’s the point now, isn’t it? Assuming he’s awake, he’s always armed.”

Jacen shrugs at that. “He’s at least attempting to make an effort to be peaceful when he’s home.”

Finn looks thoughtful at that. 

 

 

* * *

3/22/2

Sleeping isn’t coming easy.

Jacen doesn’t like it, but he’s gotten used to the feel and sounds of Critt on the other side of the room. His current bunk is too narrow, too hard, and too… alone. He’s almost in danger of seeing if one of the Porgs will come in and join him, just so he’s got some company in here.

He gets up, pulls on a shirt, and heads into the main room. He can hear the faint murmur of Finn chatting with Rose over the holo in the cockpit as Chewie lounges back, smoking a cigarra, reading a newsie.

_Can’t sleep?_

“Apparently.” He eyes the gameboard, sees how to beat Chewie in three moves, and decides not to do it. He makes himself not focus on Finn and Rose talking.  “You got a family?”

 _Once upon a time._ Chewie shrugs a bit, smokes a bit. _Found some new family. Lost them. Makin’ do with another new one._

Jacen sniggers a bit at that. Then he thinks. “How old are you?”

_248._

“We’re like your pets, aren’t we?”

Chewie laughs, long and loud and hard. After he gets his breath back, he says, _I suppose so._ Then he ruffles Jacen’s hair affectionately.  

Jacen rolls his eyes at that. But… well, he probably is a pet to someone with a four hundred year expected lifespan. “Is Kylo family?”

Chewie looks like he’s going to try to answer that, and then doesn’t, not with words. He just lets himself _feel_ it.

Jacen knows what he’s doing, but can’t really get it. The shape, the idea of it, but not the details. And on this one, the details matter. “Wrong Maji. You need an empath for that. You need Kylo or Rey or Xanth, not me.”

_It’s complicated._

“You know, I’ve met a lot of people, who when asked questions like that, say, ‘It’s complicated,’ and mean, 'I don’t want to talk about it,’ but you, that’s genuinely complicated.”

Chewie sniggers at that, too. He puffs out a cloud of smoke. _Is Kylo your family?_

Jacen gestures for the cigarra, takes a puff, coughs horribly, feeling like his entire insides are on fire, and hands it back. His Granda had liked a good pipe in the evening, and this is not, on any level, that.

Chewie smirks at him sputtering away. _Not quite the weeds most humans go for. This is a taste of home._

“Ah…” Jacen says with another cough. When he gets his breath back, Chewie’s still watching him, waiting to see what he says. “Good question. I’m not used to having one, you know?”

_Yes._

“And, besides Rey, he’s not used to having one, too.”

Chewie rolls his eyes. _Ben had a family._

“Uh huh. Yeah. _Ben…_ Tell me about that family back in Kashyyyk. The one you never quite fit in with and haven’t visited in decades, as you go roaming around the galaxy with your human pets. It’s not a family if you peel it off as soon as you can.”

A long, thoughtful inhale followed by, _Oddly certain for someone who isn’t used to one._

“But I had one, once. My Granda. I remember what it was like. I’m out of practice, but I remember.”

_Well then…_

“I don’t know. I probably could wrap my head around having an older brother, or good friend, or whatever we’ll end up being when the power differential minimizes.”

_You planning on being his equal one day?_

Jacen’s turn to smirk. “One day. And I know he’s looking forward to that, too.”

_And what does he see you as?_

“You could ask him that.”

_I’m asking you. You know, right?_

Jacen shrugs a bit. “Yeah, I do. Nephew, younger brother… A kindred spirit, maybe. That’s probably more Critt than me. He’s trying to be a better mentor for me than Luke was for him.”

Chewie thinks about that, too. _That won’t be hard._

Jacen’s eyes just about fall out of his head as he senses what Chewie’s thinking about.

_Fuck. You didn’t know that, did you?_

“No. Like I said, Kylo and Rey can shield their thoughts. He’s really bloody good at it when he wants to. He’s shit at keeping them off his face, anyone looking at him will have a pretty good idea, but in his head he’s fucking silent. I mean, when he’s working at it, I can’t read him at all. Luke really tried to kill him…”

“Wait… what?” Finn says, stepping out of the cockpit. Apparently, he finished his conversation at exactly the right, or wrong, time. “Luke tried to kill who? And are we talking about Luke Skywalker?”

Chewie looks annoyed. _Yeah, we’re talking about Luke Skywalker._ Chewie gets up, he fetches a bottle, and three glasses, and pours each of them one. _Okay, let’s talk about complicated, and about families._

* * *

At the end of that story, Finn’s just sitting there, blinking. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, ideas for things to say coming to the front of his head and then running away. He pours himself another drink and shoots it back.

Jacen’s feeling pretty similar. The drink isn’t making his head spin nearly as much as this revelation. Even in his neck of the galaxy, Luke Skywalker, the man who blew up the Death Star, killed the Emperor and restarted the Jedi, is a hero. More than a hero. He’s… larger than life, the epitome of good… He’s… flawless.

Chewie looks at both of them and nods.

Jacen finally gets his wits together enough to say, “You know what, with a track record like that, I’d probably stick with pets, too.”

Chewie laughs, but it’s kind of sad. _Yeah. It’d be easier if you guys were my pets._

“We’re your pets?” Finn says.

“What would you call a small companion you take care of that you’re going to outlive by decades if not centuries?”

Finn’s way more comfortable with that than anything he just learned about Luke and Kylo. “We’re not fucking porgs!”

“Of course not, the porgs are livestock,” Jacen shoots back. “You don’t eat the eggs of _pets._ ”

Chewie’s growl kills that conversation. _I don’t know if the rest of them were family, but I do know Han is. And it’s not like the two of us making bad decisions was anything new or different. Oh look, Han and Chewie are making a bad decision, must be Thirday. But that’s the one that hurt us the most._

“Shit,” Finn says.

“Yeah.” Jacen agrees.

_It’s late. Sleeping time. We’re up and about tomorrow, so…_

And when Chewie says go to bed his… family, pets, companions, whatever they are, go to bed.

 

* * *

But, just because they get told to go to bed, doesn’t mean they fall asleep.

Right now, Jacen really wants to be home, in his bed, Critt on the other side of the room in the dark, telling him _everything_ about today.

He’s thinking about that as he notices something _weird._ Spine-tingly _weird._

Jacen can feel Chewie talking, to Han, who… is supposed to be dead. He pushes his senses further, makes himself focus. Who is dead. That’s absolutely not a living person. _That’s_ what ghosts feel like, and he finds it distinctively shivery and uncomfortable.

He pulls his senses back. If Chewie’s having a heart to heart with his buddy, that’s… nothing he needs to be snooping in. He wouldn’t want anyone snooping into his conversations with Critt.

Plus, he is genuinely getting tired, and tomorrow starts soon.

 

 

* * *

Going to a tavern to sit around, drink, talk, get up to date on the local and not-so-local gossip, while reading up on everything and looking for a good route and better jobs is a hell of a lot less entertaining than Jacen had expected it to be.

Probably because he’s not doing any of that. (Besides slowly nursing a drink. They’re all doing that.) 

No, Finn and Chewie are doing all of that. Though at this point it’s mostly just reading. It’s early enough there aren’t a lot of other people in the tavern right now, so there’s not a lot of conversation to be had, or listen to, in Jacen’s case.

Jacen, on the other hand, is sitting with a datapad, stylus, and a navi chart. And an assignment from Chewie. Plot the orbit of Lirium and the course to get there. He wants to see the whole orbit mapped out before lunch, and the course by supper.

“Okay, I get it, the navigator might not always work, but, really… Do I _have_ to do this?”

For a second Chewie’s almost ready to say, “Nope,” but then the blinks, glares and cuffs Jacen upside the back of the head.

“I wasn’t doing it! I swear to the Force, being persuasive is a thing. If any other Maji were here, they could tell you, I’m not doing it.”

He’s never heard that particular curse word before, but he tucks it away for future use.

“I really wasn’t. You just also know that this is a one in a million shot to be useful.”

_I also know that one in a million shots show up a hell of a lot more often than they should. Do the math._

Behind the pad that he’s so dutifully reading, Finn’s smirking. Jacen can feel math wasn’t his favorite job, either.

Jacen rolls his eyes, turns on the pad and stylus, and goes to work. He’s muttering about “We’re going to be here all year,” as he goes through it, because while he can do the calculations, he’s _not_ fast at them.

But, eventually, he’s looking at them, and plotting the coordinates, and looking again, and glaring at the chart because that just _can’t_ be right…

“Chewie?”

_Yeah._

“Check my math.” He just hands over the calculations. He doesn’t want the chart to influence anything.

Chewie’s nodding along. _Slow. Not perfect, but right enough._

“What’s not perfect?”

_You’re a few hundred thousand klicks off. Not so much you’ll miss the planet, but if you try to come out of hyperspace too close you’re gonna be in for a bad surprise._

“Great. Here.” He hands over the chart.

Chewie looks at it and growls.

That growl makes the hair on the back of Jacen’s neck stand up, and Finn puts his pad down, fast. He looks at the chart, too. He and Chewie are both looking at a very long, narrow ellipse. “Is that… Lirium?”

“Yeah,” Jacen says.

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

“How did we not…” Finn’s asking, staring at the chart.

_I never checked. Had the navi do it, and it’s not like it knows that an orbit is trouble for the people living on the planet._

“Fuck,” Finn says.  _That_ sort of orbit is  _trouble._

Jacen’s nodding. “So, spring’s not coming anytime soon.” As best he can guess, looking at that orbit, spring isn't coming this century.

Finn just stares at the orbit, which is not, in any way shape or form, a circle, and says, “Only in terms of geological time.”

Chewie’s already packing up their gear. _We’ve got to get home, get a plan set. You get an orbit like this… Weather’s shit now, but it’s gonna get_ bad _soon._ ”

“What’s bad?” Jacen asks, also gathering up his stuff. Finn’s already at the bar, paying their tab.

_Temperatures get so cold all the moisture in the air freezes. Then you get 500 kmh winds whipping the snow around. It’ll go so fast it’ll peel the paint off the walls, and then the walls off the studs._

“Shit. What’s soon?” Jacen asks. 

_Not today, probably not tomorrow or next month, but next year? Year after?_

“Exactly,” Finn says. He pulls his credit stick out of the order pad on their table. “Okay, we’re paid up. Let’s get moving.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I don't know if it's intentional or not, but Team Resistance tops out at 5'9" with both Finn and Poe. Maybe that makes Kylo look that much bigger. Maybe they just liked mid-sized actors. I don't know.
> 
> Jacen's canonically full grown at 6 feet tall. So, yeah, he's got a few inches on both Finn and Poe.


	37. The World Didn't Stand Still

3/22/2

 

There wasn’t a great disturbance in the Force.

Jacen feels like there should have been. His world. His entire, literal world is… Well, doing exactly what it’s always been doing. He just knows about it now.

Still… It feels… shattering, or like it should be shattering, or…

He glares at the pad of calculations he’s packing up as they’re getting moving.

 

* * *

Finn’s in research mode. He’s actually really good at it, which is part of why Chewie likes having him around. He can find deals no one else can see, because he’s better at getting deep into the data. Right now, he’s looking for any mention of Lirium with coordinates.

Jacen’t never really thought of Finn like that. Most of how he deals with him on Lirium is that Finn’s the guy who teaches basic hand to hand combat, some baton work, and keep them on track when he’s around and Rose isn’t in charge. Quiet, steady back up for Rose or Rey. He tells good stories, is fun to hang out with, is the kind of Dad most of the kids wished they had, and gets on really well with Poe.

But when they’d been talking, he’d mentioned working hard, studying, officer material, and right now, on the job, Jacen’s really _seeing_ it for the first time. The adults talk about working on things, and learning, and studying and whatnot, and he knows they _think_ about it, but… Besides when Rey works with him, this is the first time he’s actually seen one _do_ anything that looks like learning-type work, and the idea that they aren’t all shitting about having to keep doing this stuff is somewhat novel. (And somewhat off-putting, apparently this _working_ thing _never_ ends.)

And it’s also a distraction. Home isn’t going where it should. Jacen rolls his eyes at that. Home is going exactly where it should. If the Force is real, if it matters, then Lirium is doing what it needs to do.

Home isn’t going where they’d like it to go, that’s the actual truth of that statement.

Yes, he’s done the math right, or right enough, but the more points they can add, the better the image of what’s going on they can get. So, studying. Research.

Chewie’s in the cockpit, finishing up a conversation with Threepio. He’s got Rebellion and Resistance databases in his head, and right now he’s transferring any data he’s got on Lirium, too.

When he wraps that, Jacen says, “When we get home, we’re going to talk, right? Figure out where we’re going next?”

Chewie nods.

“Can I be part of that conversation?”

That brings Chewie up short.

Jacen waits, patiently, because he knows that if he pesters and makes a list of why he’d be good for that conversation, he’ll look more like a child, and less like someone who belongs at the table.

Finally, Chewie shakes his head.

“Chewie…”

 _Look, kid, it’s not personal to you. This is… gonna be tense. To the extent this is our family attempting to make a decision together… We’ve never done that. Finn’s had_ one _conversation with Ben. I’ve had_ none. _Just being in the same room with him is tricky._ _And now we’re going to try and hash things out and come to some sort of agreement. Together?_

“Last night… You said…”

 _I know Han and I fucked that kid over. I know Luke did worse. He still killed my…_ Chewie pauses, which Jacen finds interesting, because usually, when people do that, it’s because they’re looking for the right word, or discarding ones that say too much, or trying to get the right spin on the issue. But the word Chewie’s thinking means nothing to him, it’s… feelings mostly. He’s got an okay idea of what he thinks those feeling should be, but he knows that he’s, at best, looking at an out of focus, black and white picture of a full color 3D holo. He knows that Chewie also understands that word means nothing to him, so he just continues with, _Han, in front of my face. Got it?_

Jacen nods. “Got it.”

Chewie looks thoughtful. _Whatever_   _Ben_ _comes up with, Finn’s gonna want something different. That’s just… How it’s going to work. I’m probably going to want something different, too. Just… Because. But I’m a grown up, or, at least enough of one to admit that I know Ben can actually talk and plan a good deal. The fucking Order would have imploded by now if he couldn't. And I’m just being a contrary old cuss, because that’s who I am. So, if the rest of the crew likes_ _Ben's_ _plan, I don’t need Finn thinking you swayed ‘em. He’s already going to be wondering that about Ben, and I don’t need the extra complication of adding you to the mix._

Jacen nods at that, too. _That’s_ a good point.  “Okay.”

 

 

* * *

Rey’s with the kids when her comm buzzes. She’s expecting Ellie Kinear, because at some point the two of them, and likely Kylo, possibly Jon, probably Mirina, are going to talk about this… wedding… thing.

So, she’s not expecting Chewie on the other line.

She’s expecting _We’re heading back, and once we get here, we’re gonna need to talk_ even less.

_Bring Ben._

That’s got her fear response starting to spike. She can think of exactly _nothing_ good, that they’re going to want to talk to Kylo about.

“Why?”

The next bit is quiet, for Chewie, but it’s loud enough most of the kids around her get it. _Working on training Jacen up. Had him plot the orbit of Lirium._

She takes a deep, calming breath. Both her fear response and Critt’s just spiked _hard._ She seeks out Jacen, and feels him, flashes Critt a quick, _he’s okay,_ thumbs up. Whatever happened as he was working, he’s alive. “How bad?”

_Best we can tell, spring’s gonna be in ninety-three years._

There’s a moment of no response, because she was expecting, _something bad happened to Jacen while he was working on coordinates._ Not, the coordinates are bad. But once she switches gears, “Nrghs!” or a sound very similar to that comes out of Rey. She swallows, and sees the kids all staring at her. “Okay. How far out are you?”

_Eight hours._

“We’ll be ready.”

When Chewie comms off, twenty-three sets of eyes are all staring at her. She raises her hands. “I don’t know. You all know exactly as much as I do about it. We’ll talk—”

“We’ll, all of us, or we’ll, the grown ups?” Critt asks.

“We’ll, the grown-ups, talk. Then we’ll talk with you.”

“We’re going to have to leave, aren’t we?” Savarah asks.

Cassie’s got her eyes closed and is feeling the weather. “Not right this second.” But knowing that things are going to get bad, she’s feeling deeper than she usually does, and Rey catches that, along with the worry it brings.

“Nothing’s going to happen right this second,” Rey says. 

“Are we going to get any say in what happens next?” Marrok asks. Rey can feel how nervous he is. He’s the reason all of his friends are here, and so far, it’s been pretty good, better than Canto was, but if it’s about to go wrong, it’s on him for saying yes to Poe.

“I honestly don’t know,” Rey replies. “If you guys want to stay, and it’s going to get too cold, then no, you’re not going to get a say. If you’ve got ideas of where next might be, we’ll listen. But… I don’t know what comes next.”

Her voice is shaking. That gets the attention of the kids. “Rey,” Xanth’s next to her, holding her hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

She nods. “I know that.” She blinks a little. “I… uh… don’t get up and move easy. Tend to settle in deep and well, and… This…” She breathes in and out. “This is my first home, and… I don’t want to leave.” She didn’t want to leave when she was in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Pulling out of here, the right place, for the right reasons, her whole body and mind is recoiling at the idea.

“Then we stay!” Rugh’s very certain about that. If something’s making Rey sad, then obviously, they shouldn’t do it. And, in Rugh’s world, that’s that.

Rey offers up a sad smile. “Maybe we will. But maybe this isn’t a good place for people to stay.” Because, recoiling or not… If spring’s that far off, it means that this is just the beginning of winter, and… Like the Kennas said all those months ago, when they noticed that there were no above ground animals native to this planet, no trees either, it’s going to get _cold._

 

 

* * *

Kylo checks his chrono. And his schedule. He’s got a half hour free, which he should probably use to hack through another file or two on his data pad. (C8’s ‘just send the bloody reports on the internal messaging system’ went out, and he no longer has his full body weight, times two, on his desk in datapads. He does have an inbox with a number so large he thinks it’s an astronomical designation next to his ‘unread messages’ tab. The one thing that bringing pads in person did was cut down on the number of messages. People who didn’t feel like schlepping a pad to him often just let things sit. Now they send them electronically, and they send _everything._ ) He glares at the pad and gets up.

He’s got time to get the blade for Jacen and run it home. He’s not sure why he didn’t just yank it out of his wardrobe and take it home yesterday, but… He didn’t.

And right now, the in-box is a sarlac pit of unending details, and a mono-molecular blade and training Jacen sounds a _lot_ more fun.

As he thinks about what he’s trying to teach Jacen, it’s occurring to him, that if he’s working with Jacen to improve his empathy, maybe he’ll be able to figure out how to get a better control on his own. He likely wouldn’t mind being able to just _know_ what people are feeling, instead of having to steep in it whenever he’s too close to them.

He opens his wardrobe, and reaches for the bundle in the back. He wrapped the blade in one of his pillowcases when he took it from Hux. He did clean the blood off of it before he hid it away. That’s a very clear memory, though most of the rest of that day is getting hazy. He was sitting there, in his conference room, before he called for janitorial to take care of the mess, the hem of his shirt untucked, one of the few bits with no gore on it, carefully wiping blood off the sheath. That seemed important at the time. He had to get it _clean._ He couldn’t take it if it wasn’t _clean._ He didn’t know why he took it, let alone why it needed to be clean when he was covered in gore. Just that that, too, seemed very important at the time.

He’d sat there, in his conference room, almost two years ago now… more than? He’s not entirely sure. Changing the dates over makes it more difficult to track time, but right now he thinks that might be a good thing. He does know he was listening to his commanders blather on and on, knowing which ones were intending to kill him, and who they were working for and with. They weren’t nervous, not until he told the six of them to stay, and then instructed one of the others to fetch Hux for a “Succession planning meeting.”

None of them knew, what, exactly to do as they waited for Hux to get there. They knew, given who was there, what he had to have figured out. But… run, fight, try to talk their way out, play innocent? They didn’t _know._ One… he doesn’t remember her name, tried to get out. Made an excuse about how she was due for… Something. She didn’t get to finish that sentence. He froze her voice and pushed her back into her seat.

As he did that, General RX-4868 started reaching for his blaster. Kylo froze him in place, too. “We are not all yet assembled. It would be rude to start before General Hux gets here.”

The door opened and Hux entered. And he knew. Probably before he opened the door, certainly after when he saw who was in the room with Kylo.

Kylo froze him dead, looked Hux in the eyes, and said, “General, good of you to join us. I understand you have plans for the succession of the leadership of the First Order.” Then he shut the door, locked it, released RX-4868, lit his saber, and the fight was on.

He kept Hux immobilized, made him watch from the doorway. The other officers in the room were fighters. Killers, too, but mostly fighters. But Hux…

Hux knew himself, his strengths, and weaknesses, and he knew he’d never be a fighter, so he didn’t even try. After all, why bother with brute force when you could design weapons that could destroy entire systems?

And when the fight was done, Kylo stood amid more body parts than he, or anyone else wanted to count, and he pulled Hux to him, wrapped his hand around his throat, stared him in the eye, felt Hux’s hate and rage and pain. No fear. Just blue-green-grey eyes so mad they’d come back round the other side to sane again, and a mind screaming at the galaxy that _this_ wasn’t how it was supposed to end, and what a fucking waste it all was. Before his vision slipped to black, Kylo ran him through with his saber. He hadn’t withdrawn the blade when he dropped Hux, and it cut through most of his torso as he fell.

He landed in a pool of blood. Kylo doesn’t remember who’s it was. Not Hux’s. His blade doesn’t leave the kind of wound that bleeds, and he’s the only one who hit Hux. Some of it may have been his own. He knows he left that fight bleeding, with a few broken bones. And, in close combat, some of his commanders hit not just him, but each other as well.

Then he knelt at the corpse’s side, yanked off his coat, and took the blade off of his right wrist. And spent the next hour, probably, very carefully cleaning it with the hem of his shirt.

And now, it’s here, in the back of Kylo’s wardrobe, still wrapped in the black pillowcase Kylo had tucked it into.

He unwraps it, and flicks it open.

Like the dark lightsaber, he can only see the hilt. But the blade is there, he can feel it. Mono-molecular blade, the sharpest edge in the galaxy. Sharper than his lightsaber. The blade you can’t defend against. No armor, no shield, no other weapon can deflect it. It cuts… anything.

Hux was the only person he’d ever known to choose to keep something this dangerous on his person. He holds it up, in front of him, by the wrist sheath. Breathe wrong, let your focus waver for a moment, and it’ll cut you to the bone and clear on through. Your limb would be off before you even knew you’d been hit.   

He looks at it in his hand, before hitting the button that pulls the blade back into its wrist sheath. A tiny ‘snick’ sound is the only way to tell that it’s retracted. It’s designed to be triggered from outside of the sheath, or inside.

All Jacen will have to do is pull his hand up, give his forearm a little squeeze with his other hand, or Force, or make a fist hard enough to cause the muscle in his forearm to bunch up, and the blade will trigger. Squeeze again, and it settles back into its sheath with a tiny snick.

This is the only blade Kylo ever feared. He saw it in action, once. Hux was in a snit, and… He didn’t see the hit. It almost looked like Hux had slapped the man on the back. But he didn’t, and the man was on the ground, bleeding out, heart sliced half, paralyzed from the lungs down, before he even knew he’d been hit. He literally never knew what hit him, and died before he could figure it out.

There is a reason, beyond their eternal jockeying for status, that Kylo _never_ let Hux walk behind him, unless he was focusing, intensely, on what Hux was doing. There was nothing in his arsenal that could stop that blade, but he could stop _Hux._  

He’d knelt there, next to what was left of Hux, no longer the pretty boy of the First Order, not after Kylo finished with him, and took the blade.

He didn’t know why, not really. There was… maybe a shape of a hint that there would be a time he’d want it, but… Mostly he was high on the endorphins, crashing fast, not sure of anything, cold in the knowledge that he’d just killed a quarter of his high command, probably three fourths of the competent ones, and manically laughing, probably sobbing, too, amid the corpses and pieces of corpses, at doing more damage to the First Order than his mother had ever dreamed of. While he very carefully, with a minute attention to detail, cleaned that blade.

It wasn’t a good day.

He looks at the blade.

He sees Hux… before. Before he ended him. Sees… a million meetings, and walking through the decks with him. He sees Snoke petting him, but only to rub his triumphs in Kylo’s face. He sees Phasma behind him, feels her loyalty to _him._ He sees crowds of soldiers, adoring _Hux_ , cheering _him._

Hux was the face of the First Order. He was what Snoke couldn’t be and Kylo wasn’t: presentable, attractive, desirable. A good face and a good voice, and the ability to rally people together and make them feel like they were on a holy mission to cleanse the universe of filth.

If he’d been even a centimeter closer to…

“Oh, stop it,” Hux says, appearing behind him, casual disdain on his face. “For all your power and mind reading, you never saw anything other than your own image of me.”

Kylo startles slightly and almost drops the blade. “You’re back.”

Hux steps over and looks at the blade in Kylo’s hand. “And you kept a memento of me. I’m touched.”

“It felt right.”

“That’s disturbing.”

“Everything about us was always disturbing.”

Hux half inclines his head in agreement. He looks at his blade. “I built that. Designed it from the hilt up. Built the condenser to create the blade. You can’t forge a mono-molecular blade. They’re crystals, not metals. You have to grow them.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Of course not.” His face is warm as he looks at the weapon. “It was before you joined us. Technically, before I joined us. Father was…” he’s debating his words, picking carefully, “stepping beyond the acceptable bounds of normal familial cruelty. When he got out of surgery with two artificial kidneys, he decided I was old enough to leave his company.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

Hux looks genuinely surprised by that. “I did… or at least Phasma did on my orders, don’t you remember?”

Kylo shrugs. He did know that. “Why didn’t you kill him _then_?”

Hux half smiles, half winces. “He was still useful.”

“To you, or Snoke?”

Hux’s expression is mild, bored almost. “Was there a difference?”

Kylo smirks a little at that. “Loyal servant of the First Order.”

“About as much of a servant as the child you intend to give this to.”

Kylo acknowledges that. Hux was only a servant in as much as he was planning to take over one day. “I’d say he’s as much a child as you were the first time you used this.”

“Likely true.” Ghostly fingers hover over the wrist sheath. “It’s the blade of a man who knows brute force will never be his ally, of a ‘mere slip of a boy who’d never amount to anything.’”

Even dead, even long past the hands of Brendol Hux, Kylo can feel the rage, hate, pain, and, unlike when he snuffed Hux’s light clean out of him, _fear_ in those words. “You should have killed him a lot sooner than you did.”

“Yes.” He glances to the stars burning outside Kylo’s viewport. “There are a lot of people I should have killed that I never got around to.”

“Cyanide tubes throughout the air processing?”

Hux’s smile is sharp, and a little surprised to see Kylo knows about that, now. “Well, it’s not like I was ever going to get the chance to cut him in half with a lightsaber, now was I? And it’s not like _he_ ever checked any of my plans. Finest weapons engineer in the galaxy and he acted like I was a tinker with a few beat up tools and no vision. A few orders, and my people would have been out, I could trigger them remotely, and then space and refil the atmo. A coup in a few simple moves with the _Supremacy_ still intact and ready for me to take over.”

Kylo’s eyes narrow. He thought that was part of the _new,_ post-Raddus attack, air processing system.

Hux rolls his eyes and sits next to him on the bed. “The first time.”

Kylo holds up the blade. “Not planning on putting this in my back?”

Hux barks a short laugh. “What could have possibly given you the idea that I was stupid? I’ve have gassed you. Even you, with all your magic, have to breathe.” Hux looks genuinely amused by that. “If you hadn’t done it for me, I’d have gotten all of your little Forcelings. Wipe you wizards and your sorcery clean from the First Order. Consolidate power. Destroy those who are defiant. Any planet, any system... A hundred million billion trillion others.” He snaps his fingers. “Gone in a heartbeat. No fear, no pain, one second existence, the next, nothing. Mine the atoms, and build more.”

“Why? What would you have left to defend?”

Hux laughs, this one long, cold, and genuine. He’s _amused_ at Kylo’s question. “Never, ever saw me.” He shakes his head, and gently, as if explaining to a child, “You don’t build a weapon like Starkiller because you want to _defend_ something. I would have built thousands of them and burned the whole fucking galaxy to the ash.”

“Even Phasma?”

Hux’s eyes go soft. “I would have danced through the embers with her and run us both through with that blade.”

Kylo swallows, hard, feeling those words, and the perverse content ripples of dark Hux’s shade leaves in his wake.

He looks at the blade in his hand, and feels a long, cold pull to space it. The sense that… anything touched by Hux is… corrupt and tainted.

He glances up at himself in the mirror, and remembers… Not training fights. They didn’t fight. Never, not even that last time. Hux was a killer, too dangerous to even try to fight, so he killed him. But they never fought.

But… They did touch. ‘Careful, Ren,’ and a hand on his wrist. ‘Watch yourself, Ren,’ that hand grown tight, angry. He didn’t generally say anything when he smacked Hux around. No warning, no threat, just brute force and ringing ears.

He looks at the blade, built by Hux. And at himself. Shaped by Hux. By Hux and Snoke, and Luke, and his parents, and…

Hux is dead. The past is dead. Maybe not gone, but it’s dead.

Just like Hux.

And shaped he is, and shaped this blade is, but neither of them are… stained, corrupted… ruined by it. He’s getting a better sense for why it mattered so much that this blade was clean. And, looking at it now, it is clean. He did a good job of it.

He re-wraps it. It’s a tool. A very good tool. Made by a man who was very, very good at making extremely dangerous tools. Made for a man who will never be the master of brute force. For a man who has to survive by his mind and his tongue.

He knows the scars on Jacen’s back. Though they haven’t talked about them. Maybe one day they will. Maybe they’ll talk about his scars, and how he got them, how they shaped him, and Jacen’s scars, and the fact that, at least once, he couldn’t talk his way out of trouble.

This is the weapon that makes sure he never gets another one.

His comm chirps at him. Rey’s voice, and he listens, nods, listens more, and says, “I’ll make sure we’ve got supper for… seven?”

Rey replies, “Sounds right.”

Kylo places the knife on top of his table. Apparently, it’ll be in Jacen’s hands a lot sooner than he’d anticipated.

 

 

* * *

Rose flops onto her bed, limp and frustrated.

It’s _normal._ Sometime around a year old, babies go from two shorter naps, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to one longer afternoon one.

And at a week shy of eleven months Paige is ‘somewhere around a year old.’

Great.

_Normal._

Of course, like all the rest of the _normal_ stuff, like teething, like moving onto solid food, this appears to involve a lot of crying, massive tantrums, a baby in a tearing bad mood, and Rose counting the minutes until Finn gets home so she can drop this child on him and vanish in the _Falcon_ for as much of a full day as she can.

She loves her daughter. She loves her husband. But some days she wants to get the fuck away from everyone else and have some time on her own. Granted, Chewie’s piloting, but he’s pretty good about dropping her off at one of a handful of her pre-married days hangouts, and letting her have a few hours where she can just have a decent meal, a good conversation with people who don’t know Finn or Rey or the rest of her life, on her own, without having to deal with anyone else’s needs.

She closes her eyes and sighs, making herself calm down. As of this point, she has put a _very_ tired little girl down three times, and each time said little girl _does not want to go down, at all_ and there has been _much fussing_ as a result.

With any luck, this time Paige is really down, and she’ll have a full hour to get a nap of her own, and then, hopefully in a better mood herself, they can go to the kitchen, have some lunch (she ‘supervises’ the kids as they make lunch/eat, and they generally do a good job of entertaining Pagie, who _really_ likes crawling around after the bigger kids), do some work in the farm, and then, please, hopefully, afternoon nap and another two hours of on her own time.

Hopefully.

Five minutes pass without a peep. She’s down.

Rose sighs with relief, and lets herself rest.

Her eyes are getting heavy, muscles loosening, breath slowing, and then her comm chirps.

She’s going to _kill_ Poe.

“What!” bites out.

“Bad time?” Finn’s voice, and now she’s awake and confused. He knows it’s nap time, and if he’s calling now, it’s a _big deal._

“Not great,” she says. “What’s going on.”

“More not great,” he says. “I’d have called later but…”

She can tell by his voice he’s rattled. Rattled enough to call now. “What, love?”

“Uh… So… You remember how when we were living with Chewie he had both of us plot a planet course and figure out the orbit, and how to get there?”

She’s nodding, not understanding what _that_ has to do with anything, let alone why he’d be calling her at nap time to talk about it, but, she can feel how off he is, just by his voice, so… “Yeah, Finn, I remember.”

“He had Jacen do it for Lirium.” She knows the expression that goes with the long half sigh, half growl that comes next. “The orbit’s a fucking oval. And not the two degrees off a circle oval that most habitable for human planets have, this thing’s as long as my arm, and just as wide, too.”

Rose winces. “Fuck!” she mutters it. “How bad?”

“We’ve got, maybe, if we’re lucky, two more years before we’ve got to get out.”

“Fuck!” This time it’s louder. She sits up, looking around their bedroom, and the home they’ve been setting up for the last year and change. They’ve been tinkering with it, bringing in new furniture and art and adjusting things and… Okay, this… probably isn’t their forever home, but it’s a good place to rest and get things into motion to be able to get that forever home, and… “FUCK!”

“Yeah. It’s not…” he laughs, but it’s a bitter sound, “I almost said, the end of the world, but, really, it’s the end of our time on this world. We can’t stay.”

“How long is winter?”

“A hundred and ninety more years, give or take some. It’s just… I mean… I guess underground, like the fucking turtles, is an option, but…”

“I’ll look into it, but…”

They don’t have to say it. It might be an option, but neither of them like it.

“What next?” Rose says.

“Uh… I think we’re getting together, tonight, at Rey’s to… talk.”

“Talk?” Rose asks.

“Yeah. I mean. I’m not saying we’re going along with what the rest of them say. We can bug out with Chewie and go wherever, but… I guess we’re going to see if we can sort of keep something like this going, for the kids if nothing else.”

Rose and Finn really hadn’t intended to half adopt two dozen kids when they decided to move here, but somehow they did, and… while the option to leave is on the table, the inclination, especially if the kiddos aren’t properly settled, not so much.

But, if it’s leave the kids or freeze to death… Actually, she knows that’s not how it’s going to go. If it’s leave the kids or live on the _Supremacy,_ because if they’re talking with _Rey…_ no _at Rey’s_ that means this is bad enough Finn’s aware that might be the answer, even if he doesn’t want to say it out loud. “I wouldn’t mind being on the _Falcon_ again,” Rose says.

“Yeah,” he sounds resigned. They’ve talked this through and through. “I know.” They don’t get in fire fights as often as they used to, but just the idea of Rose in a firefight ties Finn’s guts up, and putting Paige into one is the sort of thing that wakes him up from a dead sleep into a heart-pounding nightmare. He’d rather go one on one, unarmed, against Kylo than experience the idea of Paige in the _Falcon_ while they’re dog fighting their way into or out of something.

“We could go legit, and…” Rose starts. They’ve had this conversation before, too.

“Starve.” They’ve been tucking away as much as they can of what they make from Finn’s runs, and have a fairly decent nest egg right now, but that egg’s not going to be getting much bigger if they go legit.

“That’s not true.”

“Might as well be. Especially if Jacen’s actually signing on. Splitting a legit commission two ways hurts, three’ll mean we really are at the edge.”

“Is he?”

“I… don’t know. He looks like a fish just dropped in a pool he’s so happy here. Flexing away, and swimming with the current, and… If Chewie offered, he’d take it in less than a heartbeat.” He’s quiet, and she can sense him looking around, checking to see who’s nearby. “If he’s serious, I’m going to push him toward Poe. He’s… shit, probably a better pilot than I am already, and… He’ll be useful for getting and keeping jobs once he knows the ins and out, but… our bottom line… We really can’t take a third partner, not if we’re going to pay him, and certainly not if we’re going to do legit work. We just… The credits don’t spread that far.”

She wishes she could hold him right now. “Especially, if we have to go somewhere we pay rent… And not if we’re saving up for a ship of our own.” Legit work, if they have a ship of their own, one that isn’t as fast, but is better on fuel and maintenance, and aren’t splitting the cut with Chewie… That’s the plan. The forever home. They save up, get a ship of their own, do safer, less lucrative work, and stay together. Lirium would be the home base. The place they’d go back to to regroup, do fix-it work, spend some time on the ground, but home, that’d be the ship. Like Poe and Chewie. That’s the _plan._ That’s the promise that makes being stuck here, on her own, with Paige, waiting for Finn to get back, bareable.

And the idea that it’s about to go sideways makes both of them very nervous.

 

* * *

Critt knows that Jacen can do it. And Rey. Kylo drops words into his mind sometimes when they’re training. Savarah does it sometimes, too. They’ll be joking around or something, and she’ll glance at him, and add a comment in his head, and he’ll bust up, and everyone will _look_ and the only really good part about it is, unlike when some sort of weird Force thing would happen back home, everyone here more or less knows what happens, so Rey just says, “Savarah, comments are for later,” and then back to the lesson they go.

But Critt can’t do it. Not… as of yet. He’s a shit empath, worse as a telepath, and sometimes the others joke about that, about how even _Magiit,_ who’s got no Force at all, has an easier time picking up on other people’s thoughts and feelings than he does, but…

But Rey got that call.

And everyone is tense.

And… And he _hates_ this. Moving. Not so much. New place, new experiences, new… everything. Okay, bring that on.

Except… they can’t find him if they leave. He hates that that matters to him, but… If they go, his parents can’t find him. (He mentally rolls his eyes. They could. It’s not exactly like Kylo Ren is hard to locate, and they know that he knows where he is, but… They’d rather he was gone than deal with Kylo. He knows that.)

So, as they move onto the next lesson, and for Critt that’s an hour in the farm, weeding, which means he’s up to his ears in quiet time where he can, should he so desire, focus and think, and, maybe, if he’s lucky, master, or at least not fail too horribly, at a new skill.

Standing between the omelt and lettuce troughs, plucking the tiny sprouts of fralla grains (being digested by Faviers seems to have _no effect_ whatsoever on their ability to sprout) he mentally quiets himself, lets the world around him slip into the background, and focuses on finding Jacen.

He’s out there, heading here, getting closer. His light getting brighter, steady… _JACEN._

He’s not sure if it worked. For everyone else who can do this, it seems so easy, but…

_You’re screaming in my head, Critt. Just think normally._

_Aren’t you too far away for that?_

_Apparently, not. I’m thinking of you, you’re thinking at me, it’s working._

_So, what’s the deal?_

_I plotted the orbit of Lirium. It’s very much not a circle, and if we stick around we’re going to freeze, and then the blizzards are going to snow blast the skin off our bones, and the scour the bones to dust._

Critt lets out a long, loud breath of pain. _That’s a fucking lovely image._

_Isn’t it? Why there’s no above ground animals is suddenly making a hell of a lot more sense._

_Fuck!_ His parents had been worried about that. He remembers that. The lack of trees made them _nervous_ , and apparently those nerves were warranted.

_Yeah._

_So…_ Critt leads.

_Don’t know, yet. Chewie and Finn are collecting data points, getting a better idea of how bad the orbit is. Chewie’s muttering a lot about how the Rebellion never did the bloody homework properly. Threepio got all upset about that and shot back with none of these hideouts were supposed to be used more than three or four times over the course of one decade, and Lirium was just fine for that, and…_

_Fussing?_ Critt thinks.

 _Lots of fussing,_ Jacen replies.

_We going to Kylo?_

_I don’t know. That’s the thing Chewie and Finn are trying not to think too much about. They aren’t. I can feel that. But they’re not set to take us, and they know he is. That seems to annoy the shit out of Finn. There’s a_ lot _of stuff going on with him right now. They are planning on having the ‘adults’ sit down and chat about what comes next, so…_

_Not us. They just going to make all the decisions for us?_

_They’re going to talk. We, me especially, are not invited to this conversation. Chewie doesn’t want Finn thinking the Maji ganged up on him and swayed opinions. That said, if we don’t like the decisions… Well, wouldn’t be the first time I got people I cared about out of a bad place._

Critt thinks about that for a moment and decides that’s not a terrible plan. Especially if Kylo’s going to be at this thing. _Okay. We’re listening in, right?_

_Of fucking course we are! Holy Force, why wouldn’t we? If we’re really lucky, they’ll bring Paige along for the conversation and I can just ride along in her head. If not, Rose is usually pretty good to listen through._

Critt nods at that. He knows that the more telepathic Maji will occasionally, when feeling curious, hitch a ride in a non-Force sensitive head. (In the beginning they’d try with Rey, and found out, fast, that not only was the snooping unwelcome, but that other Force sensitives find it really easy to tell when someone is paying too much attention to what they’re paying attention to. So, as much as the Maji have ‘rules,’ it’s against them, but absolutely no one is going to say a peep about Jacen spying on this conversation.) And Rose, who has really good focus on whatever it is she’s focusing on, and doesn’t appear to get the ‘shivery’ someone-stepped-on-my-shadow feeling when there’s an extra mind using her as a ride, is their favorite one to peek into.

 _Good._ Critt thinks. _Home soon?_

 _Six-seven hours._ He feels Jacen grin. _Oh, and when this dies down, I’ve got some_ hot _gossip for you._

 _Really?_ Critt is beyond intrigued. He likes good gossip, and out here on the edge of nowhere, it’s hard to get.

 _Really. Kylo ever tell you why he’s not Ben Solo anymore?_ Jacen knows that he hasn’t. Critt would have told them, but it’s a good way to start the conversation.

_We get near it sometimes. He talks about how he wasn’t ever, not really, Ben. Haven’t gotten the full story, though._

_Yeah, well, I don’t, either, but I’ve got another chunk of it, and it’s a doozy._

Critts eyes gleam with pleasure. _Oh boy!_

_Yeah! Shit, gotta go do more math. Chewie wants me adding the extra points into the calculations, gotta go._

_See you soon._

_Yeah._

 

* * *

“You on Lirium?” Finn asks over Poe’s comm.

Poe glances at Jon across the table they’re sharing lunch at on the F-deck; they’ve got about another twenty minutes before he’s got yet another meeting. Apparently, physical plant is already behind on the construction of the new diplomatic floors, and they’re only two weeks into the job. Jon’s getting ready to, as he put it, ‘Go First Order’ on them.

(Poe’s enjoying the idea of that, and wishes he could watch it happen.)

“Not now, but I could be in like three hours, why? Aren’t you supposed to be lightyears away?”

“Yeah, supposed to.” They can both hear the frustration in Finn’s voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Chewie got Jacen doing some math,” Poe doesn’t miss the way Jon’s eyes widen just a hair at the mention of Jacen, “and the kid just plotted Lirium’s course. Best we can tell, with the coordinates we’ve got right now… You wanna guess when spring’s coming?”

Poe’s got a cold feeling in the base of his guts. “Not soon.”

“Ninety-three years.”

Poe stops moving, his drink halfway to his mouth. “Fuck.” Jon reaches over and lays his hand on Poe’s, and Poe swallows and then nods at him.

“Yeah, and I don’t mean sunshine, warm temperatures, and flowers in ninety-three years. I mean astronomic spring.”

Jon doesn’t know what that means, so Poe says, “When the planet gets to the furthest reach of it’s orbit and starts to come back.”

“You’re not alone?” Finn sounds sorry.

“Got a lunch date.”

“Hi,” Jon adds.

“Shit, you’re having fun. Look, we’re not going to be back for another six hours, but… If you can get back, we’re going to need to talk, soon.”

“Yeah. No problems. Dinner at your place?”

Poe can imagine the look that goes with the next words. “Ren’s got it. Rose didn’t have dinner for all of us ready to go, and apparently he just waves a magic wand or something, and food appears from the ethers, so… his place.”

Poe covers his comm. “Lots of backstory there. One day, we’ll get into it.”

While he’s saying that to Jon, Finn’s saying, “And… I mean… Sooner or later, we’re going to have to bug out, so…”

That gets Poe’s attention back on Finn. “Don’t worry, I’ll get my charts. Just like Chewie, I’ve got hide-outs scattered through the galaxy. I’ll see what, if anything, we can use.”

“Thanks, Poe. Sorry to interrupt your date.”

“No problem,” Jon adds.

Finn doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, so he comms off.

“So, that’s the infamous Finn?” Jon asks.

“That’s the infamous Finn. He’s… uh… normally not that rattled meeting new people.”

“Because he’s generally not meeting new people within hours of learning that he’s going to have to abandon his home?”

“Yeah.”

Jon tilts his head a bit, and then looks around the F-Deck. “Not like we’re low on space here.”

Poe’s nodding, and also looking around. “And I’m certain Ren’ll mention that when we get talking. And Finn will reply with something along the lines of over his dead body. And Chewie’ll point out that the Ticos can go with him in the _Falcon,_ but there isn’t room for all twenty-four kids, and… It’ll be a mess.” Then he grins at Jon. “Wanna come along, and join the conversation?”

“You’d bring a _friend_ to this sort of thing?” Jon asks with a spark in his eye. Poe knows what he’s doing. Every time they get together this is part of the dance. Jon pushes closer to romance. Poe pulls back, reminds him he’s looking for more than sex.

Poe looks him up and down, notices that Jon’s hand is still on his, and flips his hand, so his fingers are against Jon’s wrist, stroking lightly. “I’d bring someone I trusted to offer good advice, especially on decisions that might impact his future, too.”

Jon takes a sip of his drink, licks his lips, well-reminded of Poe’s longer-term goals, and then says, “Uh… Let’s see, long, emotionally tense conversation with people who don’t much like each other and aren’t used to working together for a high-stakes outcome. Oh, and one of them is my boss. While meeting your best friend for the first time, who’s already got a few things against me to start with. Hmmm… NO!”

Poe smiles at that. “Good choice.” He tilts his head a bit. “Kylo’s your boss?” It’s clear that Poe’s thinking that if he were to ask Kylo what he is to Jon, Boss would not appear on the list anytime soon.

“And friend, and… But, among other things he’s my boss, too, so say your Finn pops up with a really good idea, if Kylo doesn’t like it, unless Kylo’s idea is monumentally stupid, I’m going to back him, you know? Order solidarity or something. I’m not… in a position to go into things like this neutral. Plus, meeting Finn’s going to be stressful enough without doing it now.”

Poe thinks about that. “Uh… Okay.”

“That’s not how’d you’d play it?”

He shrugs. “Two parts. Kylo first. In my experience, which isn’t vast, and involves a mutiny, so… But, it does involve Organa wrangling, so… It’s hard to find people who will stand up to you when you get to his level, and generally, having them around is valuable.”

Jon inclines his head. “He’s said some things like that to me, too. And eventually I’ll get comfortable with it. But, for right now, unless he’s coming up with something that’ll bite him in the ass so hard it’ll take his leg off at the hip, I’ll probably go along with his plans, especially for something like this.”

“Fair enough.” Poe sighs. “Secondly, Finn. I mean… He can at least sit down and have a functional conversation with Kylo, who cut him in half once, so, assuming you’re not in uniform, it should go… okay… enough.” He hasn't exactly mentioned to Finn that he's pursuing this particular relationship, or where he thinks it might be going, or... anything about it, and Finn, having heard that Jon exists when they were talking about sex with the boys, has apparently decided to let it lie and wait for Poe to bring it up.

“Noted. Not today though.”

“Okay.” Poe’s looking out at the crowd, starting to feel what’s happening.

“Not looking forward to it?” Jon asks.

Poe shrugs. “I mean… For me, moving is just a matter of turning _Micah_ on. Same for Chewie. We’re not bound to Lirium. But… It’s Finn and Rose’s first home. Their daughter was born there. It’s Rey’s first home, too.” He shrugs at that. “First house at least. For a while there, she was living in a scavenged AT-AT.”

Jon blinks. “How…”

“They were a bloody stupid design. Those legs were just begging to get knocked over. Someone knocked one over on Jakku, and of course, once you knock one over, they don’t get back up again, so she turned the main compartments into a cabin.”

Jon blinks at that, too. “That’s…” He can’t find the words for how he feels about that.

“Absolutely nothing in your understanding of how the universe works. Yeah. I’d rather not have to know that people live that way, too.”

Jon nods. He’s… sketchy, at best on Jakku. He read up a little after learning that’s where Rey was from, but there really wasn’t much about it, beyond the most basic levels. At one point it’d been a fairly functional planet, big war, lots of weapons, ended up a desert with most of the population dead. Far enough out to be difficult to get to, close enough to still be useful for off-the-books traders. The Empire popped up, and it became a place where people who wanted to skirt the Empire’s trade laws would gather to buy, sell, and work out deals. Come the fall of the Empire, what was left of the Navy skedaddled out to there, and that was the location of the final battle of the Rebellion.

The Rebels won, but the battle was hot and hard enough that the whole planet ended up littered with refuse from the fight. And refuse bought scavengers, like Rey’s parents.

And apparently scavengers live in and with whatever they can scrape together. Jon takes a gulp of his tea. “Makes me want to stick more recruiting stations all over the galaxy. Maybe I can’t make local conditions any better, but I can try and make it easier to get away from them.”

Poe nods at that, too. “Yeah. Which brings us to the kids. We don’t exactly trumpet it, but… All but one of them are orphans. The one who isn’t might as well be. His parents bugged out rather than deal with him not being a lightling. Anyway, all of our kids, they’ve had their entire lives uprooted at least twice. Once when they lost their original family, and then once when I grabbed ‘em up and brought them to Lirium. I don’t like the idea of uprooting them again.”

Jon can understand that. He didn’t exactly enjoy uprooting himself, either. “Should be a little easier this time, their people are going with them, and that makes moving easier.”

“I really hope so.”

Jon finishes his drink. “It’s not my department, not really, but if you want, I can get a list of the planets under our control. Technically, we’ve got sixty-thousand of them in our territory, and more than a few thousand of them are out and out ours. At least some of them have to be able to support human life in some level of comfort.”

Poe thinks about that. “I’d appreciate it. My guess is not landing in Order-controlled space will be important for this to work out, but it’ll be good to have options.”

“I’ll send you some,” Jon says, standing up.

“And you’ve got to go.”

“A million and one meetings, and that’s just this week.”

Poe smiles up at Jon. “Then, I won’t keep you from them.”

Jon’s fingers brush the back of Poe’s hand. “I certainly wouldn’t mind if you and yours crashed here while you’re looking for somewhere new to go.”

Poe smiles at him. “We’ll see.” He waits a few moments, and watches Jon walk off, great coat slightly swishing behind him as he cuts through the crowd on the F-Deck.

Out here, where everyone is an officer, and most of them are off duty, rank doesn’t matter that much. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t notice Jon, don’t straighten up a little when he passes, don’t _watch._

Poe’s watching, too. He likes watching. Then he rolls his eyes, swallows a long sip of his drink, and settles back to people watch and think.

He wouldn’t mind landing here. Too much. Part of him lights up every time he sees Jon. Part of him knows that if he were to get his own access card to the F-Deck, and maybe C-D and E, he could… call himself a Morale Improvement Officer of the Maji or something, spread the good word, play enough cards to keep himself flush for the rest of his natural life, and have a very good time.

He rolls his eyes slightly, and sips his drink. He’s already spinning ‘the good word.’ Irate people, annoyed at losing, ask him all the time how he’s so good at this, and he taps his spiral, looks holier than everyone else, and says, ‘When you’re in balance, everything else falls into place.’ And he’ll grin, and then add, “Including the cards.”

Sometimes people ask what he means by that, so he tells them. Sometimes they know that he’s spinning pretty words. Either way, he wins enough to keep _Micah_ fueled up, and Lirium in nice bits and bobs, and the kids in occasional goodies, so… It’s enough.

Except, apparently, the goody Lirium needs is a new orbit, so that’s outside of anything he can possibly do. 

He settles back into his seat. He really could live here. Easily. Kylo’d fix it for him. A permanent space for _Micah_ to dock. An apartment for him, though he’s not sure if he’d use it if he had a permanent space for _Micah._

He’s toured the currently under construction part of the ship that’ll eventually be the diplomacy section. Getting a space for himself there wouldn’t take more than a few words. Maybe they’d get around to that thing he’s supposed to be doing for the Order. The thing Jon just mentioned, him going in and getting people out of places they don’t want to be. They could get that set up, and… This… could be home.

Be easy enough to get the kids here, too. And… It might be better for them. More other kids around. More things for them to learn. Ren talks about making the _Supremacy_ a floating city, a real one, and real cities have kids in them, so…

Finn’d hate it. He wouldn’t come here. And if he’s not willing to come, Rose and Paige won’t, either, not for more than a quick visit. And… He can’t even begin to imagine Chewie setting foot on this ship. That’s… Just not going to happen.

He sips his drink again, watching the line of people Jon vanished into. He’d see Jon more if he lived here. Their current once or twice a week might become once or twice a day. He doesn’t know if that’d be good or not. Good because… because every time they get together he’s just… more in love.

That’s what this is. They are… getting to know each other… and he just… likes… what he’s learning. He likes being with Jon, and being near him, and… And under that glove he knows that ring’s just sitting there, glinting away.

Sometimes, when he’s not paying attention, Jon’ll rub his thumb against it. Poe watches people well enough to know that _most_ of the time it’s unconscious. But _sometimes_ it’s not. Sometimes, he’s remembering Lane, or reminding himself of him, or… Sometimes he’s sad. He doesn’t like to let Poe see that. He’ll say something, and Jon’ll look away for a second, rub the ring, and then flash a bright smile at him, touch him, and change the subject.

Poe’s pretty sure they aren’t at the point where he can say, ‘You know, you’re allowed to be sad around me, right? It’s okay. I’m not going to crumble under your sorrow.’ He’s not sure if he’s at the point where he can admit that he sees it, yet. And he’s not sure that if he said that to Jon, if Jon’d flash the pretty boy at him, and try to use his looks and sex appeal to shy away from it.

And he’s not sure, that if they saw each other all the time, and he was constantly being blinded by the looks and the sex, if he could keep this up, where he doesn’t just give into it. Right now, he can spend a few hours a week with Jon, and enjoy him, and keep learning him, and then go back to _Micah,_ and leave. And he can get his tool serviced, and go dancing, and blow off steam, and come back and be warm and charming and good to talk to and not get so wound up with sexual tension that he loses the ability to stick to the plan.

Granted, if he lived here, he’d still be able to leave. And if he popped over to Rey and Kylo’s and reminded him about the whole, ‘Hey, there was something I was supposed to be doing, too’ bit, that he could likely spend a lot of time in little out of the way places, setting up recruiting stations and getting people out of places like Jakku.

After all, if he could recruit for the Resistance in places the Resistance wasn’t supposed to be, he can likely figure out how to get Order cells running. All he needs it time, a good cantina, some decent cards, and an adequate expense account to cover the drinks, and he can get the good work started.

And then come back here, and charm his sweetie, hopefully have some good stories to tell, and see if that ring’s come off, yet.

And see the kids, check in with them, see what they’re up to. Give it another year or two, and Jacen’ll likely be grown up enough to be useful for setting up cells, too. And maybe a good enough pilot to get people into and out of them, too… Be good to have skills like that…

This is… workable. They’ve just got to… sit down and talk it through.

He sips his drink again and then gets up. Might as well get home before the shindig’s going to happen.


	38. The Family

3/22/2

When they land, Jacen makes a straight bee-line for Rey and Kylo’s. He knocks, and Kylo opens the door. “Good, you’re here.”

Kylo’s a bit surprised to see him. “Hello?”

“Look, I know Chewie’s going to be here soon, and I’m not supposed to butt my nose into this, so—”

“Butt your nose into what? What happened?” Kylo’s looking confused.

“Tonight. Big talk? Where we all go from here?”

Kylo relaxes a bit. “Oh, yeah. For a minute there, I was beginning to wonder if you’d done something with those transistors.”

Jacen blinks. “Uh… No. I mean, I can tell you where they landed, but…”

Kylo waves it away. “Don’t worry about it. Two million credits worth of goods is a big deal to Chewie and Finn, and a significantly smaller one to me.”

Jacen looks surprised. He hadn’t had any idea they were that valuable. “They just moved them. I know we didn’t get that much for it.”

Kylo’s nodding. “Later. I’ve got something for you.”

“Good, but…”

He’s heading into his room. “But? You wanted to tell me…”

Jacen can see him rooting around in there. “Finn. He’s not going to like anything you come up with.”

Kylo comes out with a package wrapped in black cloth. “Amazingly enough, I had figured that out.”

“Don’t be a smartass, Kylo. If you’ve got something you want him to say ‘yes’ to, make sure it goes through Poe or Rey. He won’t agree to living on the _Supremacy,_ but short of that, he’ll at least listen to it if it doesn’t come out of your mouth.”

Kylo sighs. “Wonderful.”

Jacen’s eyes narrow a bit. He’s _trying_ to be helpful here. “Look, planning. Making people do what you want them to. That’s part of what you’re working on, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you want to get into a fight with him, or you want to work this out?”

Kylo kind of wants the fight, if for no other reason than Finn appears to be wanting one, too. Rey and Poe won’t like that, though. And if he gets into a fight with Finn, then that means he’s in a fight with Rose, and… “Work it out.”

“Good. Get his idea first, and if you hate it, have someone _else_ counter it. That’s good advice.”

Kylo nods. “Yeah, it is.” _Not just for Finn. Any situation where people are prickly about me…_ His idea of who Rey is in the Order of the Maji continues to coalesce.

Jacen’s nodding, and Kylo realizes he might have just as well said that out loud. “Can you project thoughts, well enough to—” Jacen starts.

“I’m fully telepathic with Rey, and not sure about Poe.”

“Okay. If you need an assist with Poe, I might not be physically here, but I won’t have to be.” Then he looks at the black bundle Kylo’s holding for him. “What’s that?”

“A wrist knife. Your future last-ditch weapon. Mono-molecular blade. Like I said, this is _dangerous._ ” He unwraps it.

“Is that a pillowcase?”

“Yes.”

“You have black pillowcases?” Jacen’s looking up at him in amazement. Though there is a black blanket on the bed in the room behind them, from what Jacen can see, the sheets are light green.

“Obviously.” Kylo holds the sheath, and wiggles it a bit. “Focus.” He points the side the blade comes out of toward Jacen and down. He doesn’t have to say to Jacen to stay back, he knows. “Blade comes out there.” He hits the button and they both hear the snick.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Exactly. The blade is one molecule thick. No one can see it. But that also means it’s sharper than you can imagine. This is the blade you, me, anyone else, cannot defend against.” Kylo shifts his hold on the pillow case, drawing it over where the blade should be, and they watch it flutter to the floor cut in two. “To stop this blade, you’ve got to stop the sheath.” He gives it a little squeeze, and they hear the snick again. “This is something you’re going to need to be _extremely_ careful with. No playing with it on your own. I’ll get you something like it to train with, but—”

They hear knocking at the door, and Kylo doesn’t even glance at it, he just flicks a hand and it opens.

Neither of them were expecting Chewie to bow his head and enter Kylo and Rey’s home.

 _Jacen…_ Chewie’s growl has a bit of an edge to it.

“Yeah, I know, I’m not invited to this thing. Kylo had something for me, okay?” He gestures to the blade, that Kylo’s rewrapping for him.

Kylo’s fairly impressed at how smoothly Jacen’s not exactly lying, but misleading. He’s not sure he could, even now, pull that off without a single tell or straight face.

Kylo nods at him. “I do training stuff with the kids, too.” He hands the blade to Jacen. “No fucking with it until we’re together, okay?” _Seriously, neither of us want to explain to Rey why you need new fingers, got it?_

Jacen grins at him, and Chewie nods. He doesn’t exactly buy this, but he knows at least the surface level is true.

“Ta, Kylo." Jacen flips him a ironic, two-fingered salute, and is off.

For a long moment, he and Chewie just stand there, staring at each other.

Kylo’s almost tempted to try some sort of small talk, but he knows he’ll be useless at it. He’s wishing that Rey or Poe would show up, but the Force, or universe, or something seems to think he and Chewie need to be in the same place at the same time, alone, so neither of them appears.

_Kid likes you._

Kylo almost startles at the sound of Chewie’s voice, but it’s not an attack, accusation, howl of rage, so he nods. “I like him, too.”

 _He thinks you’re a good person under all that black._ Again, the voice is calm, and a bit wary.

Kylo doesn’t have to glance down to see he’s still in his command blacks. He does run his fingers through his hair and bite back his first response. The thing that seventeen-year-old Ben would have said to start a fight…The thing seventeen-year-old Ben would have _felt_ with that comment _._ _He thinks; you don’t._ He shrugs a bit and lets himself actually _feel_ what Chewie’s trying to communicate, not just go blasting off at him in a defensive rage. “Trying to be.”

Chewie’s eyes narrow. He too was expecting some sort of insulted, angry flare in response. _I know. You’re doing good by Rey, too._

Kylo takes a long, slow, deep breath, feeling his eyes burn. He swallows, hard. “Thank you.” It’s easy to see how grateful he is to hear that from him.

Chewie growls at that.

Kylo looks shocked that _that’s_ what is bugging Chewie right now.

Chewie waves that away and shakes his head. Kylo can feel the disappointment, aimed at… everyone and thing. Mostly at himself, and Han, and Leia, and Luke, that Kylo could get to years past thirty and be that grateful for that mild of a compliment. Hell, that’s not even a compliment, not really, that’s just acknowledging reality.

Chewie sits down, in the big, comfy chair, the only one that really fits him. _He was talking about you. Trying to… make Finn understand, I guess. Or me. I… let what happened with Luke slip. Didn’t mean to, but the kid reads minds, and he was talking about you wanting to be a better mentor for him than Luke was to you._

Kylo sits at the kitchen table, back to the table, facing Chewie and nods, slowly. “You… know?”

Chewie growls, and Kylo feels forced back by the amount of anger aimed at Luke.

He blinks. “Oh… He… didn’t give Rey the real story. Only told the truth after she had it from me. And… even then… I don’t think it was dead on.”

_You woke up from a dead sleep with a lit saber glowing a few centimeters from your head while he had a heart to heart with his own dark. That’s the story we got. You think he was going to try to lie to Leia and Han?_

For a moment, Kylo’s literally dumbstruck at that. When he can speak he says, “I… didn’t think he’d have told you that… told you anything.”

_What did you think happened?_

“He ran away. One day… I guessed Mom or Dad finally noticed that even I got back to calls in less than six months, and they investigated and found… nothing left.”

_He came after. There was still ash in hair and smoke in his clothing. He told us he almost attacked you, was getting ready to turn the saber off, but you woke up right before he turned aside. You blasted in into next week, and then killed the other students. Your mom went dead white. Your dad punched him so hard he knocked out three teeth, broke Luke’s jaw, and his own fist, and then I grabbed him because he was reaching for his blaster, with his left hand, and he couldn’t shoot for shit with his left hand, and we left._

“To go where?”

_To Luke’s. To find clues. See where you’d gone. Took us a while to track you down. Almost a year. Then Lando. He had the largest force at his command of anyone we knew, and… If we were going to make a strike on the First Order, it was going to take a lot of manpower._

“Did you… Think I’d been kidnapped or something?”

Chewie snorts, because it’s clear Kylo’s asking, ‘Why go after me?’ And, of course, to Chewie, the answer to that is so blindingly obvious, it’s not even worth asking. _Or something. We learned more about Snoke as time went by. He was rising fast by then. The dark voice… That started to make sense. Luke… That began to make sense, too. He’d likely been playing all of you since before you were born… Then we got rumors of the Knights of Ren hunting down other Force sensitives… It all sort of crystallized, and… If we were going to get you back, we were going to need a_ lot _of men._

Kylo rolls his lips together, and blinks very slowly. “Oh. I… Lando said, ‘No?”

_He only had five million guys under his command, and no combat ready navy._

“Not enough.”

_Not enough._

They’re both very quiet, and then Kylo says, “I…” he rubs his lips together, hard, and makes his voice work, because he can’t just feel this at Chewie, he’s got to say it. “When the cabin blew, a third of them were sure I’d murdered Luke for no good reason. Just woke up in the middle of the night and murdered him. Another third of them… M’Gll… If Luke thought I needed to die, then I needed to die, and that was that. Didn’t matter if I’d done anything or not. For them, Luke was _always_ right.

“And… I was screaming, at him, and them… And they were going to kill me. Try at least. I knew he wasn’t dead… I wanted him to see it all… fall… die… burn. I needed him to see that, but… They… didn’t know, couldn’t feel him, didn’t care if he was alive. However, it worked. I was too angry to really feel them.

“I got it enough together to start yelling about what happened.

“They didn’t believe me. Most of them. We lived together, studied together, worked together, I’d trained with all of them, and trained more than half of them in… a lot of things… Saber forms to calligraphy, but… Luke was gone, my cottage was in ruins, and…

“I didn’t kill all of them. Or most. Just… M’Gll. She was the only one good enough to require someone who could really fight to knock her down, though.” Kylo doesn’t know if he’d have killed any of the others if it’d been up to him. But it wasn’t. By the time M’Gll was done, so were the others. “Kammun, Rona, and Mark… They joined me.

“After, we had a ship. I still couldn’t fly then, but Kammun could, so he asked me, ‘Where now?’ and for a second, I almost said Chandrilla. But… I was covered in blood, had just killed M’Gll, and…” he’s biting his lip hard enough it’s bleeding, and the sting and taste of blood is centering for him, pulling him to here, and now. “People who saw me every day thought it was my fault. People who _knew me_.” And again, he doesn’t have to say that his parents, and Chewie, _didn’t_ know him. “They would have… Mom would have thrown me out, and taken Luke’s side and… If I’d showed up, covered in blood, with three friends… She’d have never believed Luke was at fault, not on my say so, or theirs. Dad would have gone along with her; Dad always went along with her, if it was about me. You know that.

“And the voice in my head gave me coordinates, and then we were heading to the First Order.”

Chewie just growls. No words. A _lot_ of sorrow.

There’s the feel of Rey followed by a moment of her appearing in their home, and a heartbeat of extremely confused emotions followed by her immediately springing over to Kylo and pulling him into her arms.

“What the hell did you do?” She’s glaring at Chewie, who’s also a few beats behind on what’s going on and looks very startled to see Rey just appear out of nowhere _and_ put her physical body between him and Kylo like she’s getting ready to fend off an attack.

_Just talking._

Kylo doesn’t mind snuggling into her embrace, but he does squeeze the hand that’s on his shoulder, too. “Just talking.”

Her eyes narrow as she looks at him, wipes the blood from his lip, and rests her fingers on it, healing the damage. “What kind of talking involves you chewing a hole in yourself.”

He kisses her fingertips. _Hopefully, the good kind._

She raises a brow at him. _Really?_

He nods.

Chewie inclines his head, watching the two of them commune silently. It’s clear he’s getting ready to say something, but there’s another knock on the door, and the meeting is on.

 

 

* * *

Slipping into the Ren house, Finn looks nervous, Rose looks wary, and Paige, who had a really lovely afternoon nap, and now gets to play with Daddy, is having a blast.

What Finn immediately wants to do is grab Paige and run out of the house, back to his own place, and spend the rest of the night there.

He grits his teeth and makes himself _not_ think about that. He busies himself getting Paige out of her snow gear, and trying to actually _see_ Kylo, who Jacen does not seem to think is nearly as much of a threat as he does.

His Highness and Mightiness the Lord Supreme Commander is in his blacks. Which, apparently, are not all black now. There’s some grey on there. He’s standing next to Rey, who’s also pulling off her cold weather gear, and sort of looking like he doesn’t know what to do next. His eyes flick to Finn, and then he sort of curls in on himself, hunching a bit, and… _Fuck._ Jacen might possibly know what he’s talking about and…

Okay, _calm._ Finn makes himself breathe deep and slow. And focus on Paige again, because he’s gotten one bootie off, and she’s not loving the lack of attention to detail.

Rose is at the cooker. “Smells good.”

Kylo says to her. “Uh, thanks. I didn’t know what everyone liked so it’s probably kind of bland, but…”

 _What is it?_ Chewie asks.

“Beef stew. I’m not sure what a beef is, but it’s warm and looks filling,” Kylo says, opening the cooker, and levitating a huge bowl of something brown and bubbling to a hot pad on the table. “Biscuits, too, and there’s some salad in the cooler.”

Rose looks over to him, and smiles, a little. “Cows. At home they were cows.”

Kylo’s eyebrows knit. “Beef is cows?” It’s abundantly clear that he thinks that’s a beyond weird name for the animal a beef comes from.

“Yeah, don’t ask why, I don’t know.”

“What are cows?” Rey asks, once she’s got her jacket hung up and boots off.

“Uh…” Rose has never tried to describe one before. “Think smaller Faviers, with hoofs, and horns, and smaller ears.”

"Smaller like," Finn holds his hands out, about shoulder width apart.

"Smaller like, twice the size of Chewie if he were on all fours," Rose responds and Chewie flashes her a  _look._ She shrugs, "They are!"

Rey takes Paige from Finn, so he can get out of his own cold weather gear, and nods Rose toward the bowls on the shelf near their door. “I’m thinking we just put everything on the table and serve ourselves?”

“That’ll work,” Rose says, reaching for the bowls.

Kylo being temporarily edged out of the supper business, decides that maybe this isn’t a meeting for his command blacks, and sidles out to his own room to change.

As he’s doing it, he feels Rey in the back of his mind, _Good plan._

_Not looking like me._

_Looking like you’re relaxing at home with your family._

_This is not my idea of relaxing._

_I know, love. I know._

It’s several hours later when he notices that he didn’t challenge her on the family bit.

* * *

By the time he’s out, in his Padme non-blacks, Poe’s here, too, opening the bottle of whatever he brought to drink.

“No Jon?” Kylo says as he sits next to Rey, and Poe passes over a glass of what smells like some sort of wine.

“Shockingly enough, he decided that _this_ conversation might not be the one to get introduced to ‘the family’ with.”

“We’re _the family?_ ” Rose asks.

“Aren’t you?” Poe shoots back with a grin, handing her her glass.

Finn rolls his eyes, and mutters something about the Order under his breath. Paige is in his lap, and looking very bright eyed and interested in all of this. He takes one of the biscuits and breaks a small piece off. “Here, baby. Pre-dinner snack.”

The smell hits him like the _Falcon_ going from a full stop to hyperdrive in under a second flat, and leaves him just as leveled.

He’s never had beef stew before. It was never on the rations. But the biscuits. That’s… memories. Hundreds of them. Breakfasts and suppers gulped down between shifts. Slow meals at the start of his eight off. Bitching with his buddies about commanders and jobs and equipment while chawing down on dinner. Hunched over a data pad, studying, studying, studying. He had to be the best, had to know everything, had to… He hasn’t thought of one in years. Wouldn’t mention having eaten them before. They were just a thing he’d grab a few of while walking down the line in the canteen.

Ren’s staring at him, muttering something about he should have gotten something from the F-Deck, looking like a kicked puppy. How someone who’s almost the size of Chewie and personally ordered the destruction of an entire planet can get away with looking mortally sorrowful about bringing the wrong breadstuff to a dinner is light years beyond Finn, but… It’s fucking real. Ren’s about to take the damn things off the table and go find something else, if he doesn’t respond soon. And just to make matters worse, Finn, of course, hasn’t actually said anything about this, Ren’s just reading it off of how he’s watching his daughter nom the biscuit on down and make grabby hands for more.

“It’s… no… Don’t.” Finn grabs the bowl they’re in and makes sure they stay on the table. “Fine,” weakly slips off his tongue. “Just… memories. Haven’t thought about them in forever. Didn’t think about them even when I was eating them every other day, but…”

“Every other day?” Poe says, maybe a beat behind on what’s going on, but determined to leap into position to help those two build some empathy.

“Uh, yeah… The canteen… It’s a really long room. Lots of tables and chairs, but you don’t have to eat there. At the far end there’s a wall covered in food stations. Four main ones, veg, protein, starch, sweet, and then over and over and over again. Each station will have at least six options a day, and they’ll change from day to day. You grab a tray, load it up, and then go eat wherever. At the tables, in your room, on the D-Deck, wherever.” He glances up at Ren who’s staring at the biscuits like he’s never seen anything like them before. “Let me guess, that’s not how it works in officer land.”

Finn doesn’t see, but he does feel Rey sort of poke Kylo to get him talking. “I don’t know. Maybe? The first few weeks food got brought to us, and then… Hux and I never got along, and by a few weeks in he realized I wasn’t leaving, so he started thinking about ways to get rid of me. I knew he’d had his father poisoned, so I stopped eating anything I didn’t open for myself. Three protein bars, two vitamin mush packs, and water. That’s what I ate. I’d go fetch it from storage, and make sure it was sealed, and…” He picks up one of the biscuits. “I think I had my first one of these last year?” He looks to Rey, and she nods. “We ate it together, so not more than two years ago.”

“Kresh rations?” Finn’s eyes are wide. “You lived on Kresh rations?”

Kylo nods. Then he shrugs a bit, pulling the bowl of stew toward him, and spooning out portions for him and Rey. “I like food, like eating, but it’s not like it was a big sacrifice. I was coming off of fifteen years of eat to nourish yourself, not for pleasure, so it’s not like I was going from carefully crafted delicacies to packaged nutrient bars. If Luke had known about Kresh rations… Okay, no. I’m sure he knew about ration bars. He thought having us nurture plants and run the farm was important, circle of life, and how the Force twines into everything, but… It wasn’t like the quality of food suddenly dropped, just the variety.”

 

* * *

Kylo feels like this is surreal. He knows he’s home. In his house. With Rey.

And Rose, and Finn, and Paige, and Poe, and Chewie.

And, apparently, they’re going to _talk,_ and make decisions, like… a family… maybe… if that’s the sorts of things families do, about what’s going to happen next. Granted, as best he knows, families don’t do things like that. One of them makes a decision, and then the others yell about it for a while, and then they storm off to the ends of the galaxy and pout about it.

He glances around the table, and realizes that Poe and Rose might have the kinds of families that did things like make decisions together, but the rest of them don’t… Or didn’t.

But, Finn and Rose make decisions together. And he and Rey do. Chewie and his dad always managed it. So… They aren’t doomed at this. Just… rusty… or unpracticed, with each other, maybe.

But, because this isn’t a thing they do, or at least, have ever done before, none of them really seem to know where to start. Especially with that light and fluffy conversation about food to start this up. Kylo could feel the mood of the table drop like a rock, but he couldn’t figure out how to get out of that bit of conversation without killing everything and…

Rey’s holding his hand. _It’s okay. Not everything has to be light and happy all the time._

He kisses her, and then looks, really looks, past his own stuff and sees her and… _Oh… Shit. Are you?_

_I’m okay, enough. Later, we can talk about me, later._

And he knows that’s a lightling distraction technique. He knows it’s plastering a smile on a scream, but he also knows that she’s not wrong on the timing.

He squeezes her hand. _Later._

So, right now, there’s a lot of quiet chewing.

Poe’s the one who breaks the silence, “I guess, first question is, how bad is this going to get? Are we talking about ninety-three more years of—”

“Ninety-three years?” Kylo asks, looking stunned. “I’m sorry. I just got Rey’s comm about us talking about having to leave. Spring comes in ninety-three years?”

 _Only on the most literal of levels._ Chewie puts his holo-projector on the table. Everyone recognizes the two stars of Lirium’s system. He highlights Lirium. _We’re here now, just zipping out past the blue star. But we’re going to keep zipping, for ninety-three years, and then ninety-three years back, and then there’s a forty-year warm spot, followed by twenty-six years of much too hot where both suns are heating the planet, then another forty year warm spot by the green sun, and then another hundred and eighty-six of winter, and…_ They watch Lirium zip around in it’s long oval.

Kylo puts his fork down and rubs his eyes. He’s suddenly understanding why Rey said nothing beyond that everyone was gathering for dinner at their place, because a decision needed to be made on where to go next.

He kisses her temple. “Like Poe said, how bad is this going to get?”

Chewie throws up another planet with another orbit. _This is Hoth. It also has a long oval of an orbit, but its orbit doesn’t go nearly as far out. Granted, it doesn’t get nearly as close to its sun, either, but that’s not exactly important right now. The Rebellion used Hoth because it was an extreme outlier planet that was so cold just about nothing could live on it. There were deep caves with some level of vegetation due to the hot springs, but on the surface… Things would crawl out now and again, but they didn’t stay out._

_We were there in what passed for summer, and it was so cold that if you were outside at night… Well… You’ve heard that story, right?_

Kylo’s wincing, because Ben also winced at that story. Finn knows it, too. Rose, Rey, and Poe don’t. And it’s clear at how they’re looking between Chewie, Finn, and Kylo that they want to know.

Kylo shakes his head. “It’s… gross.”

Finn’s staring at him. “Gross?” Yeah, it’s not his favorite story ever, but _gross_ isn’t how he’d describe it.

“You got Chewie’s version of it, right?” Finn nods. “Which is really my Dad’s version, and that’s big on swooping in and saving the day and the million to one shot coming up roses again. I got Luke Skywalker’s, ‘I woke up, choking, inside the corpse of a Tauntaun, with my body covered in cooling viscera, hands and feet and face on fire from frostbite, half frozen to death.’ And if that’s not enough, he could project that sensation, so most of us got to feel what it’s like to wake up with a chunk of intestine in your mouth, gasping for air, freezing.”

Everyone else winces, including Chewie, who mentions that Luke left that part of the story out when he told them, and Poe says, “Okay, yeah, that’s gross.”

“Dad cut the thing in half with Luke’s lightsaber and tucked them both in so they wouldn’t freeze.”

“Uglh,” Rose shudders. “And that was summer?”

_That was summer._

“Dad talked about that." They're all staring at him in amazement. "Hoth, he talked about Hoth, not using Tauntauns as heaters. He didn’t enjoy being stationed there,” Poe adds. "Granted, Mom was on Yavin, and I was a year old, so that was part of not being happy about being stationed there, but the weather sucked, too."

_None of us did. So cold any machine not rated for deep space would freeze solid. And even the deep space ones tended to get tetchy out there._

"He was a mechanic, and... so cold the lubricants would freeze. So cold the buildings were carved out of snow and ice. He had a mustache, and it was always covered in ice crystals because the moisture in your breath would freeze. And, like I said, he was a mechanic, so all of that was inside. Not like they were sending him outside."

That gets more wincing.

Finn’s watching the orbit. “And we’ll be there…”

“In a year,” Rose says. “Colder yet the year after.”

“So…” Kylo says, tentatively, not looking to start a fight, but feeling like this is the kind of thing someone has to say. “We’ve absolutely got to be out of here in two years?”

“Or go underground,” Rose says. She scoops up the last bit of her supper, and then takes Paige from Finn. “Good girl, waiting for Mommy to finish eating.” Paige, with smears of biscuit on her chin, grins up at her mom, and then happily settles in for her evening nurse.

Kylo, who’s never seen Rose nurse Paige, isn’t exactly sure if he’s allowed to watch. It’s not like he can see much, Paige’s head is providing beyond adequate coverage, but this still feels intimate in a way that sharing a spoon of beef stew with their daughter didn’t. Granted, no one else is looking at the walls, or away from Rose, but no one else isn’t sure if they belong here.

 _It’s your home, Kylo. You belong here._ Rey strokes his hand. He nods at her, and resettles to watch the couple across the table from him. Watching Finn stroke his daughter’s curls as she cuddles in against her mama sets off a bright flare of wanting deep inside of him. The envy is hot enough that he might be projecting it, because Finn looks up at him with a jerk, but, for once, doesn’t seem alarmed.

Chewie shakes his head, drawing his attention back to the conversation. _Underground’s not good for anyone. But humans need to see the sun. It’d be one thing if we were going under for a year or so, but… This is the entire rest of your lives, and the kids’ lives, and their kids’ lives. Fuck, probably the rest of mine, too. That’s…_ He shakes his head.

“Not tenable,” Finn says.

“We’ve got… us… and twenty-four kids… to find a home for.” Kylo’s being intentionally vague with us, he could just mean him and Rey, or he could mean the six of them.

“And let me guess, you’ve got a plan for that?” Finn shoots back.

Kylo mentally thanks Jacen, because his immediate, first thought response is, _Fuck, yeah! I’m the one with the great big ship that can fit all of you in comfort and ease without even having to blink._  But what he says is, “The start of one, but plans can always be improved. How about you? Ideas, Finn?”

He can feel Rey’s surprised by him doing that. _Jacen gave me a heads up before everyone got here. I’m trying to be… diplomatic._

Rey squeezes his hand.

“Comments, Rey?” Rose says, not having missed, at all, the silent conversation.

Rey sighs. He can feel her first thought, to just brush over it, slap that smile on her face, and look like this is okay. He squeezes her hand again. _It doesn’t have to be okay. Not here, and not now._ She licks her lips, and then says, “I hate the idea of moving. I… It’s just a place, but…” She’s holding Kylo’s hand, he bows his head, resting his lips on her shoulder. “Its our home, you know? And… I… years working on this, and giving it all up, and… I don’t want to leave. But want doesn’t matter, now, does it? Want isn’t going to make spring magically appear.” Kylo’s stroking her back as she says it.

Rose has a soft look on her face. “I know. I’m not thrilled with the idea of packing up or leaving, either.”

“Less thrilled at having to move underground,” Finn adds. He looks discouraged by all of this, and for a moment Kylo’s wondering how much Rey’s projecting, or how much of this is everyone taking off the brave face.

“We’re not moles,” Poe says, and then notices that no one else knows what a mole is. “They’re little rodents that live under the dirt back on Yavin. Anyway. Underground is off the table.”

Chewie agrees with that. _Just a matter of where to go next. So…_

Kylo intentionally stays quiet.

Everyone is looking at him, waiting for him to offer the _Supremacy,_ but he holds his peace for another long beat, and then finally, when it’s clear that no one else is going to say anything first, he says, “I know… it’s not ideal. But, I have, literally, hundreds of square kilometers that are currently empty. I’ve got apartments that are still set up from the Last Night celebrations with no one in them. Say the word and… The Maji,” he looks at Finn and Rose, who aren’t wearing Maji pendents, “and friends, have a home.”

Finn’s not glaring. He wants to glare. He was prepared to glare. He had a mental script of how this was supposed to go, because there’s a way officers behave, and Ren, who is not just _an_ officer, he’s _the fucking_ officer, His Lordship the Supreme Highness, seems to be awfully good at just marching on in and ordering everyone around. And he was ready for that. Ren would order everyone to the _Supremacy_ and he’d draw his line in the sand, and they’d argue, and maybe he’d get the better of Ren, win a point or two and…

It would have felt good.

But no, the bastard gave him the chance to come up with a place first, then waited to see if anyone else had any other ideas, and on top of that prefaced his idea with the fact that he’s aware of the fact that there are issues with it.

Which means Finn’s got to play nice, too.

So, he’s not glaring. He’s… thinking.

Rose leaps in to the rescue. “Kylo, we’re not comfortable on the _Supremacy._ Finn did not have a good time the last time we were there, and… It’s one thing to visit for a bit, but Finn…”

“Were you stationed there?” Kylo asks.

“Yeah. At least some. Wasn’t there the whole time. Don’t wanna go back, not… to any of it.”

Kylo nods at that, too. “I haven’t been back to my rooms on the _Finalizer_ , either. Too much… everything, there.”

Finn’s not loving the common ground, but he does nod at it.

“What do we need, for a place to be home, for all of us?” Poe says, looking pleased that this hasn’t devolved into a shouting match, or worse a shooting one.

_Can’t be anywhere with a warrant out for me._

“Does that cut half the galaxy out?” Poe asks, flip.

Chewie rolls his eyes, then says, quietly, for him, _A third._

“There are no open warrants out for you, any of you, in Order territory,” Kylo says. “And, currently, we’re not opposed to bounty hunters coming into our territory. Schiff decided that making them pay a small fee for a license to hunt in our space was an easy way to make some money, but…we make the price of going after an Order citizen exorbitantly high.”

Chewie blinks. _I know you killed the warrants; you didn’t make us citizens, did you?_

It never even occurred to him to do so, but Kylo says, “No. But C8 set Rey up as a full citizen in less than five minutes, I can’t imagine it’d be any more difficult for the rest of you.”

Chewie relaxes a bit and nods.

Kylo thinks about it for a moment… “Finn… uh… I didn’t do it, but… I also never checked. Everything blew up less than a week after you left, so… You’ve got your five in, you might be a citizen.”

Finn’s got no idea what to do with that. “The warrant out for me was for desertion and treason.”

Kylo shrugs. “Yeah, but… Like I said, I don’t know how they did it, but I think everyone on the roll with five in got a citizen’s chit. And since you can leave anytime after your five now, and still qualify, I don’t know how they did it. You didn’t have to be active duty when I changed the rule. Hell, I was encouraging people to leave at that point, just to get rid of old Imperials and Hux-grads. You just had to have your five in. I can… check… if you’d like.”

Finn groans and rubs his forehead. “No. I… Don’t want to know.” He’s got no idea, at all, what he’d do with the idea of being an Order citizen.

“Finn… if not for you, let me check for Paige. I get you don’t want it for you, but… Anyone fucks with one of my citizens, the entire Order shows up and fucks them over just as hard, if not harder. Any one who did their five, and their children, became citizens.”

Finn shakes his head.

Kylo nods. “Okay.” But he doesn’t miss the way Rose looks at him. He’s got the feeling the two of them are going to be having a one on one conversation at some point in the future.

Finn lets out a long breath. “I can’t… do Order territory.” Then he bites his lip. “Not… unless there’s nothing else. I…” He does glare now, but… He can feel, or at least imagine, Rose thinking at him, _compromise._ “If it’s just us… Not Order space. That’s… I can’t do that. But, safe place for the kids, right? Hidden enough that people who want to weed out Force users can’t find them. Protected for the same reason. So…”

He lets that dangle, and Poe says, “You don’t like the Order, you’ve got good reason for it, and we’re all fine with that, but you acknowledge that there might be a good reason for the kids to have a shit ton of guns pointing away from them to make sure they don’t end up with more of them pointed at them.”

Finn nods. “Yeah.”

Rose says, “Are you… hearing anything like that?”

 _No one’s talking about hunting for Force users. Not now. But if history is anything to go by, every third jacked-up dictator or Emperor wanna-be goes looking for them as a scapegoat or a weapon. And, even with you,_ Chewie looks at Kylo and Rey _doing this Order thing, there’s something of a power vacuum starting, so… Soon. Three years, five tops._

Rey inclines her head. This is a more comfortable topic than them having to uproot and move. “That’s in the Jedi histories. Part of why they formed the Jedi in the first place. Protection. People who can levitate or read minds in some backwater, tend to get burned alive.”

Kylo quietly says, “So not… primarily Order territory, but perhaps, Order protection, and… If we have to move before somewhere else can be found…”

Finn nods. “Yeah, as a… stop gap. For the kids. If we’ve got to bug out fast…” He looks to Chewie, who nods. The Ticos always have a home on the _Falcon._

Kylo almost smiles at that, but decides not to, because he doesn’t want to be seen as patronizing. He feels Rey give his hand a little squeeze.

_Diplomacy huh?_

_Apparently,_ he thinks back. Then he says, “The primary advantage of Order space is… we don’t have to pay for it. And I don’t know what planets cost, but I do know they aren’t cheap, or if they are, it’s because they’re not suitable for humans.”

“We don’t actually need an entire planet,” Rose says. “We probably don’t need an entire continent, or… Honestly, a few thousand square klicks somewhere’ll do.”

Kylo doesn’t want to budge on that one. “Security is better if we’ve got a whole planet, or moon, or something like that. It’s easier to control the airspace than—”

“We can shield a space just fine,” Poe says. “That’s easy enough to do. And—”

“Get burned to a crisp when they bombard us from atmo. I personally command thousands of ships that will take a few thousand square klicks right off the surface of a planet like,” and he snaps, “shield and all.” Kylo replies. “A whole planet gives us a _much_ bigger buffer zone.”

“You put the generators under the shields, Kylo, then you can’t burn them from atmo,” Poe says.

“You shoot the planet on the fault lines and the bloody thing cracks to pieces, Poe, and then it doesn’t matter where the shield generators are, everyone is dead!”

Chewie’s rumble shuts that conversation down. _And all of it’s moot. The best defense is no one knowing where we are. A significantly motivated enemy is not going to be put off by a planetary defense versus city defenses._ He just _looks_ at them, and, well, given what they’d all spent the last five years doing, and what Kylo and Poe’s parents did… They’ve got the point.

 _Subtly, through a series of buffers, buying a plot of land will work just as well as grabbing a spare planet somewhere, and likely be a shit ton easier than getting a spare planet, because planets that support human life, in any level of comfort, already have piles of humans on them._ Chewie rumbles a soft laugh. _You little scurgls are like mold. Once one of you touches down, the next thing you know the whole fucking place is covered with you._

Rey thinks about that for a moment, says, “Not always,” and it’s clear she’s not sure if she should continue, but she does. “We know one that isn’t.”

Chewie blinks. They _do_ know a place where a human touched down, that didn’t then immediately sprout thousands more. Then he slowly nods. _True. And, I guess, it’s sort of yours?_ He glances to Kylo. _Maybe. Not sure how that worked._

“I think it belongs to the Jedi, not Luke,” Rey replies.

Kylo shrugs. “I’m the last living Jedi in addition to the last Skywalker.”

(Finn and Poe both roll the fuck out of their eyes. There’s only so much pretentious bantha shit one guy can claim.)

“And you’re a prince, too,” Poe says with more eye rolling. “Your high and mighty-ness.”

“Only she gets to call me that,” Kylo fires back.

Chewie sniggers at that, feeling whiplashed by family history in this moment. _This_ is very much the sort of Ben he and Han had hoped for.

Rey sighs a bit, any other time, she’d probably like the teasing, but right now it’s just annoying her. “It probably belongs to the Caretakers now.”

“The… Where the cottage was?” Kylo asks, realizing he never found out where that was.

_Ahch-To. It’s way the hell out in the bloody middle of nowhere. It does have native sentient lifeforms, but they’re local and from what I can tell don’t have the tech to get off world. It’s obviously stable enough in it’s orbit we won’t all die there. What happens if you try and put… this… on a Force hot spot?_

Rey thinks for a moment. “I think we’d look for a different island. I… The caretakers didn’t like me, and… It’s not like there weren’t thousands, if not more, islands there. We could… See if there’s one a little more hospitable for us.”

“The caretakers didn’t like you?” Rose asks, though Kylo’s thinking it, too.

Rey rolls her eyes. “I might have… almost… accidentally, killed a few of them, totally by accident, and kind of broke a few things.”

Kylo arches an eyebrow, remembering that second of clutching at himself, sure he’d been shot, and then realizing that the blast didn’t touch him. “Did you, perhaps… shoot through something you shouldn’t have?”

Rey almost smiles. “I might have, just possibly, shot through a wall of a building, and badly scared a few people.”

Poe’s looking from one of them to the other. “Okay, one day, you’ll tell that story, but today is not that day. If we’ve got a potential out of the way, fairly well-hidden planet, all we’ve got to do is set a new place up, and then move.”

Kylo rubs his lips together, then says to Finn, “Would I be correct in assuming, that, in addition to not being in Order space, you’d prefer the Order didn’t bankroll this?”

Finn nods. The last thing he wants to see is a pile of Order transports show up and move them from point A to B. That completely kills the point of trying to do this secretly. “I get a lot of your personal funds are in this, and… appreciate it, but…” He’s quiet, thinking, even just moving will cost them, and then setting everything back up again, and who knows what sort of new stuff they’ll need for islands, and… Money. It always comes back to money.

But… they had an answer to money. They’re still, supposedly, working on that, so… “Canto Bight. We haven’t talked about that for a while. That was the plan, right? Work on our gambling skills, stick you two in… I don’t know, a mask or something, so people won’t recognize you, and then go off and fleece the parasites? We can still do that, and more than cover what’d it cost to set up a really nice neighborhood.”

Poe grins. “We’ve got time. It’s not like we’ve got to bug out tomorrow. We can get this planned up right, scout out a really nice island, set weather satellites so we’ve got some idea of what we need in a place to land, actually get our homes built before we move… This is doable.” He glances to Kylo. “And I for one wouldn’t mind if some extra manpower showed up to help put things together. I can ferry them around so they won’t know where they hell it is they went, but if you can provide people to do things like get us proper water treatment and power set up, before we begin to put houses down…”

Kylo’s nodding at that. “I just might be able to find someone to do that. Especially if you’re providing transport…” He glances to Finn, making sure he’s okay with that.

Finn nods. “I’m still… uneasy… about your people knowing where we are. Back in the day… If Hux had had a little hidey-hole, I could think of a lot of people who would have paid well to know where it was and then use that to end him.”

Kylo inclines his head. “Yeah, I know. I wasn’t one of them because… Not my style, and I was under direct orders not to kill him, but I knew at least a hundred who would have paid you very well for that, and ninety of them likely would have stabbed you in the back before you left the room so how they got the information couldn’t leak. If it’s any comfort, most of them are dead now, and a few ran away.” He doesn’t mention the one who’s the highest ranked officer of the Order, technically his second-in-command, the Grand Admiral who runs his entire fleet, or that Kinear would have just… known.

Finn blinks. “I’m… not sure if that is.”

Kylo nods. “So… scouting trips? Looking for… what? A place with a decent beach, but… big enough hurricanes aren’t a problem? We’re probably going to want the settlement inland, but… I don’t know, something near water, for… fun or something.”

“We get a decent dome over it, the kind that retracts, or the ones generated by a field, hurricanes won’t be a problem,” Poe adds. “We could be right near the beach, and just put it up if the weather looks like it’s taking a turn for the worse.”

 _Those are_ really _fucking expensive,_ Chewie adds.

“Well, if we leave Canto with less than fifty million credits, I’m calling it a bust, so…” Poe replies.

Chewie nods. _That’ll cover a field-generated dome, at least one of the size you’re likely thinking, and the start of a decent settlement._

That gets nodding. Finn’s looking at Ren curiously. “You just… like beaches, or is this a Maji thing?”

“Yes?” Kylo answers. “I like beaches, and,” he glances to Rey, who nods, “There’s something about the place where water meets earth. It feels… right.”

“Warm,” Rose says. “I don’t mind a place where we can go visit snow if we like, but if I never have to dig out again, I’d be thrilled.”

That gets some chuckling.  

_I like trees. They make everything more expensive, though. Gotta cut a bunch of them down for a landing place, and cut more of them down, or build in and around them._

“Home had a lot of trees,” Poe adds.

“Is that a good thing?” Rose asks.

Poe shrugs a bit. “It’s not a bad one. Unless you’re trying to land a bird that’s dead at the stick. Then it’s bad.”

They’re quiet for a moment, the Poe says, “Rey… Thoughts?”

She looks bleak. “No good ones. Once we get moving, I’ll be okay. I’ll probably like looking for a new place, and doing the work to set it up, but right now…”

Kylo’s rubbing her back. He can very much feel the difference between his dark and her light right now. He’s perfectly fine with picking up and heading off, and is rather looking forward to finally seeing the place he’s only glimpsed through the Force. Meanwhile, Rey’s mourning a lost home, and fighting her desire to be settled, to stay put, in order to get up and move.

“Is there anything you want in a new home?” Finn asks.

Again, she shrugs. “Probably not a desert. And I know we’re talking about Ahch-To, and… It’s a planet, so the whole thing can’t be like Luke’s island, but that was cool and damp and… Remember fall? When it was the cool, rainy damp?” They all nod. None of them liked that. “I think it’s like that year ‘round where Luke was.”

“Try to find somewhere a bit more comfortable,” Finn says. “I mean, the entire planet can’t be one climate. Any world with enough liquid water for form oceans has to have multiple climates. We’ve just got to find a nice one.”

“I’ve got…” Kylo realizes he doesn’t, not literally, have, weather satellites. “Okay, I assume I’ve got to have, or at least can get, weather satellites. If I can get them to Poe, he can get them orbiting Ahch-To, and… if we’ve got a year or so, we can take the time to find out what the different biomes are.”

“Can’t we just look this planet up?” Rose asks.

“By the time Luke was looking for it, it’d been scrubbed from the records, and once he found it, he hid himself away there,” Rey adds.

Chewie thinks about that. He scratches his chin. _Do you have Palpatine’s records?_

Kylo blinks. “Uh… Some of them. I don’t think we have the whole thing, but I know some of his people brought their equipment with them. Schiff defected wholesale, brought his whole armada and equipment in, if he had copies, I can ask.”

Chewie shakes his head. _Don’t ask. Run it through R2. If it’s in your files, he can find it, without you getting your slicers wondering what you’re looking for and why. And without… Schiff? Admiral Joshia Schiff?_

Kylo nods. “Grand Admiral now. He… uh… runs my entire navy.”

Chewie growls deep and low at that.

“He’s good at it.”

 _I wouldn’t be growling if he wasn’t. Han and I spent a year-and-a-half spearheading the expedition to try and bring that bastard in. Couldn’t do it. Slippery fucking nerf and lucky as sin, too._  

“Oh. Uh… probably.”

_Can you get a copy of his navi charts?_

“Uh…”

_He knew the outer rim and unknown regions better than anyone else. That’s why we couldn’t catch him._

“And you wouldn’t mind knowing, too?”

Chewie’s got a very satisfied smile on his face. And Kylo knows that the _Falcon_ has one of the most complete navi charts in existence, and if he can offer something to make it even better… _Not at all._

“I’ll put the question to R2, and he’ll get what he can get, okay?”

Chewie looks pleased at that.

Rose says, “So, scouting Ahch-To. Maybe we all go, do our own recon, see what kind of places look good. If we’re lucky, we agree. And, if we aren’t… Well, we don’t have to live right on top of each other.” That’s likely a nice way of saying that the Tico branch of the family may decide to be on an entirely different island than the Ren branch, which… Actually… Might be a good solution.

Close enough to visit easily. Far enough away so they aren’t tripping over each other.

“And, once we’ve got some sites… I can start to get estimates for putting in a functional settlement,” Kylo says.

And Poe finishes, with a gleam in his eye, “And then to Canto Bight, where we’ll fund this endeavor.”

That gets a collection of satisfied smiles.  

 

 

* * *

Jacen looks to Critt, Magiit, Elias, and Savarah.

“Ahch-To?” he asks.

The rest of them just shrug.

“No… Jedi stories?” he looks to Critt.

Critt shakes his head. “Nope. Beaches and weather that’s not constant blizzards sounds good, though. It’s been too damn long since I had a swim.”

The others all sort of nod. “Wouldn’t mind heading back to the _Supremacy,_ especially if you all were coming with,” Jacen adds.

“Gonna flounce around and make us salute you?” Elias asks with a grin.

“I do not _flounce!”_ Jacen sounds appalled.

“Oh please, you’ll be wiggling your bum around looking for Grand Marshall Wet Dream,” Critt says, smirking at him. He _knows_ how Jacen reacted to Jon.

Jacen rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, according to Ren, Poe’s got a claim on Grand Marshall Wet Dream, and that I’m supposed to keep my bum to myself on that one.”

That gets some very surprised looking kids. Finally, Magiit says, “Wait, Poe and the Grand Marshall. Like… really?”

“That’s what Ren’s saying, and he’d know, I’d assume,” Jacen says. “He’s close with the Grand Marshall, and apparently friendly with Poe, so…”

“Why is Ren saying that to _you_?” Savarah asks.

“Because he’s the fucking empath, right? Apparently, everyone on the bloody deck, not just you all, noticed me noticing him, so…”

“So he…” And Elias is sniggering at this. “Set you down for a _talking to?_ ” That’s got all the kids giggling.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” Jacen rolls his eyes. He takes a sip of his cocoa. “You wanna talk spit about me and Wet Dream and what isn’t going to happen, or you want to hear the real story I got while I was with Finn and Chewie?”

“Real story?” Critt says. “ _Real?_ We’ve got you and Ren, and we’ve got we’re all bugging out in the next year, what’s more real than that?”

“You ever wonder why we aren’t Jedi?” Jacen asks.

“Because they were flaming twits when it came to this dark/light stuff,” Critt replies.

“Probably that, too, but… Ren’s training with Luke Skywalker, back when he was like, our age, and Luke tried to cut his head off for being dark.”

That’s so shocking the other four of them go silent for a long moment, followed by four voices, all at once, clambering for more details.

 

 

* * *

Once it’s just the two of them, Kylo says to Rey, “Well…”

She sighs at that.

He steps up behind her, drapes his arms over her shoulders, and lies his chin against the back of her head. “Moving. It’ll be good.”

She exhales long and slow at that, looking around their home.

“And, we’ll get a chance to actually set up a home, together. This is your place, and there’s my place on the ship, and this new one, it’ll be our place.”

He’s not getting a sense of wild enthusiasm off of her.

“Space for both of us, and maybe a kid or two?” He floods her with a version of the mental image of the Ticos having dinner together, but them, with their baby. “Put it near the water… Maybe have that wedding, the one for us, as part of celebrating building a home, for both of us, for our family.”

Another long exhale. He can feel her just _ache._ He holds her near, lips pressed to the top of her head.

“Do you just need some time to be sad about this?”

Rey nods.

“Okay. Does it bother you too much that I’m not?”

Rey finally speaks. “You don’t have to be sad about this. Like you said, this is my place, not yours.”

He looks around their home. It’s white and cream, and there are a few bits and pieces he’s brought over with him, but… “That’s… not… exactly true.”

“Yeah, but it isn’t wrong, either. You never really liked this place.”

That gets a sigh from him. “I didn’t love it at first because it was a place where you were that I wasn’t, and I was still kind of afraid that one day you’d just run away.” She leans her head back against his chest. “I liked the fact that you liked it. I liked that it made you happy.” He half turns her, half turns him, and kisses her. “My home is with you. And I’m looking forward to building a new one, for both of us. But… here, there, in the _Supremacy,_ as long as you lay your head there at the end of the night, it’s my home, too.”

She gives him a little half smile, and lays her head on his shoulder. “I’m probably not going to like packing.”

He shrugs. “Win an extra hand or two at Canto, and we’ll buy new stuff.”

Rey looks scandalized at that. “Just… leave it?”

He turns her to fully face him and kisses the tip of her nose. “I’m not exactly joking, but I’m not dead on serious, either.” He glances around. “I mean… do you actually love any of this stuff, or are they just useful tools?”

She rolls her eyes a bit. Sometimes, it’s abundantly clear that Kylo has never, ever wanted for any _thing._ He draws her closer for a tighter snuggle.

“It’ll be good.”

She sighs a bit. “Tomorrow or the day after.”

“It’ll be good tomorrow or the day after.” 


	39. Simple As A Wedding (Affair of State)

3/23/2

 

“I take it you had some excitement yesterday,” Ellie says as she joins Rey in her… their… “Oh my… Well, it’s certainly not black any longer,” room. She’s engaging in a very slow twirl as she looks over the newly painted private chamber of Master and Mistress Ren. Her eyes settle on the flower on their table. “Nice. Is that a Rhindra orchid?”

“Yes.” Like K'Oanan said, they do seem to thrive in a happy home, and sitting there on the table, it almost glows.

“Gift from Kylo?”

“No.”

Rey’s watching Ellie go to the flower and gently pet one of its petals. Her fingers glance over the glass-like surface before she looks to Rey and says, “You seem tense.”

Rey rolls her eyes a little. “I… am. Yes, yesterday was exciting. I’m sorry I had to break our appointment.”

“Things happen. Are you okay?”

Rey sighs at that. “Eventually. Do you want… tea… coffee… That’s how this works, right? I invite you and offer snacks.”

“That’s how this works. Coffee, due to it’s cost, is for extremely esteemed guests, but if you want to make people feel special, or decide that we’ve got quite a bit more in the accounts than we actually do, it’s good to offer it.”

“Oh. Uh… We usually have it with breakfast, and I know Kylo has a few cups a day.”

“Yes. That’s been… noted.”

Rey catches the way Ellie says _noted._ “Is that a bad thing?”

“The Master of an empire…” Rey’s eyes narrow slightly, this isn’t supposed to be an empire, “Organisation… this size is allowed his expensive pleasures. As long as his men aren’t starving, no one will blink. Expensive luxuries to the top only matter when the bottom isn’t getting by.”

“Ah…” Rey waits.

“Right. Tea would be lovely. I never developed a taste for coffee myself.” Ellie smiles gently and sips her tea. “So, are we just working on your socializing and small talk skills, or…”

“I suppose… I should be doing more of that, but… That’s not today. Kylo and I have talked, and thought, and… researched, I guess, and… We’ll be the Handsome Prince and His Lady. Bring on the big sparkly wedding, and the Master and Mistress, and… the… spectacle.”

Ellie smiles at that, too, but this time it doesn’t quite get to her eyes. She drops her hand to Rey’s and gently squeezes it. “Honey, you look like you’re being dragged in front of a firing line. What’s going on? Do you really want to do this? Because… I mean… I understand, to a degree, you and Kylo are producing an image to make people want to be part of this. The Handsome Prince and his Lady are not, really, you. But the idea isn’t to get drug kicking and screaming into something you loathe.”

 

 

Rey stares at Ellie’s hand on hers, not sure what to do with that.

Ellie keeps going, “Unless you can muster at least some genuine enthusiasm, this isn’t going to work. We’re trying to polish you up some, not transmute you into an entirely new thing.”

Rey sighs at that, and pours herself more tea. “I’m… It’s not the wedding stuff. I’m not this… flat… on it. Parts of that might be fun, and…” She’s not sure if she should tell Ellie about the private, family wedding, so she leaves it out, for now at least. “Jacen was out on his first training run, and Chewie had him plot our planet’s orbit, basic math and navi training, and…” She’s wary about saying it, but… Not like they’re going to be there much longer. “None of us are enjoying winter, but apparently, it won’t be spring, real spring, snow stops falling and the plants grow, spring, for another hundred and eighty years.”

Ellie winces. She doesn’t say, _you settled somewhere without a full eco scan,_ but Rey feels it and rolls her eyes viciously.

“It was a _Resistance hideout,_ and before that a Rebellion one. There was no reason to think it hadn’t been scanned. Though, apparently, Threepio tells me that, no, that wasn’t standard procedure for anywhere they didn’t intend to settle full time on. Apparently, the only thing they were looking for in hideouts was stable enough to not immediately kill anything that landed on it.

“Anyway, winter is just going to get worse. So, we’re moving. And… I get it. We’ve got to go. Staying does not work. But…” Rey looks miserable.

Ellie lays her hand on Rey’s, again, giving her a little tug, closer. “Come here.”

Rey looks a little confused, but she scoots a bit closer, and then Ellie hugs her.

For a moment, Rey’s very stiff. Ellie’s hugging her, and petting her hair, and it’s almost confusing for a moment, then she relaxes into it. Ellie’s _comforting_ her.

“You don’t want to go.”

It’s not a question.  

With her forehead on the older woman’s shoulder, Rey quietly says, “It doesn’t matter if I want to, or not. We’ve got to go. It’s go or freeze, and… So, we’re going.”

Ellie gives her a little squeeze. “Do you know where you’re going next? Here?”

“Not here. And, more or less. We’ve got an idea of where we’re going next, but… Still have to find a place, and start over, and…” She’s letting herself feel sad. “Thousands of hours of work, just… abandoned to the cold.”

“I’m sorry. If it’s any condolence, sometimes, you really do just have to scrap it all and start over. They’ll tell you the Captain goes down with the ship, but they’re wrong. If the ship is sinking, a wise man gets himself, and his people, off of it. Only a fool doesn’t jettison when the alternative is ruin.”

“Is that… joining the First Order for you?”

Ellie inclines her head a bit. She’s not exactly saying, yes. Rey has the sense that going in after the fall of the Empire, allowing themselves to be captured, and trying to get along with the New Republic was jettisoning the sinking ship. What Ellie says is, “When we left, we got to do it on our own terms and time, but… a lot of what we had just had to be left. People notice if you begin a massive liquidation of funds and property. So, one day, the entirety of Clan Kinear vanished. A _lot_ of the grand kids did _not_ like that.”

“Uprooting their entire lives for something that they didn’t understand?”

Ellie nods at that, and sips her tea, and then says, “Or did understand, and hated, because it wasn’t _their_ fault we’d been on the side of the war that lost. And they couldn’t tell their friends what was happening. That was the hardest part. It wasn’t likely that the New Republic would go after them to hunt us down, but it also wasn’t certain, and that was a risk none of us wanted to take. Your children?”

Rey shrugs a bit. “Freezing to death is a very concrete concept. Our youngest is five or six, and even she gets the idea of, ‘it’ll get so cold we’ll all die.’ They understand why we’re going. And, since we’ve got an idea of what we’re looking for next, a lot of them are excited by that. Most of the fussing we’re getting is going to be over who gets to decide where we go. Who gets to go on the scouting parties? And what sort of things we’re going to rebuild with. With a side of, ‘And we’re not living on the _Supremacy_ , why?”

It’s clear Ellie’s curious about that, too.

Rey shakes her head. “You didn’t put your whole family on Pat’s ship when you ran, right?”

Ellie nods.

“Exactly. It’d be one thing if we had to get out tomorrow, but we don’t, so…”

Another nod. “I really am sorry to hear about that.”

Rey sighs. “Yeah. Anyway, that’s coloring everything else right now.”

“As well it should. I’m here, so I’m guessing you still want to talk about weddings and whatnot?”

“Might as well distract myself, right?”

“It certainly won’t hurt.” Ellie sips her tea.

“So…” Rey starts. “Uh… Do we need Kylo for this, he’s…” she focuses on the far side of the door. He’s reading more reports. “not so busy he can’t join us.”

Ellie’s amused by that. “Grooms aren’t exactly superfluous in weddings, but they generally aren’t deeply involved beyond the level of showing up. This… Part of this is showing off the Order to the galaxy. Part of this is enticing people to join us. And part of this is a show of feminine power.”

“You’ve talked about that idea, before.”

Ellie nods. “Power is eternal. It’s also gendered. At least, among human and humanoid societies that have sex.”

Rey blinks. She’s fairly shocked to see Ellie just lay _that_ out in front of her.

“Sex as a noun, not a verb. Sex is… biological reality. What’s between your legs and in your genes. It’s… without a lot of medical help, generally immutable. You are male. You are female. You are something in between or none of the above, but whatever it is, that’s pretty much it.”

Rey’s never run into the idea that anyone would, with medical help or not, seek to change their sex, and it’s clear on her face.

Ellie offers a bit of a smile at that. “Not everyone’s outsides match their insides. Sometimes, you need some help getting them to line up.” She pauses. “Kylo couldn’t be Ben, no matter how much people tried to shove him into a Ben-shaped mold, and no matter how hard he tried to shove himself into a Ben-shaped mold, it just wasn’t going to happen. Some people are like that when it comes to their sex.”

“Oh.” That’s a concrete idea for Rey.

Ellie nods at that. “But that’s… not what we’re talking about. Sex is not gender. Gender is how, given the way your society works, that sex is expressed. In many ways, it’s how you let other people know what sex you are, and what sex you’re interested in. It’s… usually… highly correlated with what’s between your legs and in your genes, but it’s not a one to one ratio. And what’s male-gendered on one world could be considered female-gendered on another.”

Rey’s pursing her lips.

Ellie nods at that, too. “If you saw a person in bright colors, tights, high heels, makeup, and jewelry, with fancy, poofy hair would you expect that person to be female?”

“Probably.”

“And here, on the _Supremacy_ , in say, nine out of ten cases, you’d be right. But, if we were on Pyrithia, in nine out of ten cases, you’d be wrong, because that’s local fashion for _men_ there.”

“And fashion is how gender is expressed?”

“Part of it. That’s probably the easiest, most readily visible layer.”

“Okay, so this is… feminine power? All, fancy and bright and pretty?”

“Something like that. Masculine power is… easy. Big guns, bigger ships, carrying around even bigger armies. ‘Do what I say or die.’ There’s not much finesse there.”

“Biggest shaft wins?”

Ellie cracks a smile at that. “Well, the man who knows best how to use it wins, not necessarily the biggest one, but… Again, right general idea.”

Rey giggles a little at that. “Finesse comes in how you use it, not just having it?”

Ellie grins. “Exactly. And… they’re generally under the impression that they’re absolute masters of finesse, but when it comes down to it, there’s really only so many maneuvers to be used, and anyone with a slightly above average intelligence can figure out which one gets used when. So, right now, we’re, metaphorically, sitting astride the biggest shaft in the galaxy.”

Rey’s biting her lip, staring at her tea, vibrating with giggles.

“And, just as when one is doing that on a non-metaphorical level, it’s the job of a good woman to… guide the action to bring it to a… satisfactory conclusion. Just because he thinks he's got finesse coming out of his... ears... doesn't mean he can't take some help making sure everyone ends up happy.”

 _Rey?_ Kylo’s obviously curious as to what’s got her so amused on the other side of the wall.

She’s still laughing. _I think this is what Rose calls ‘girl talk.’_

And Kylo’s mind retreats from hers.

“All giggles aside. For a very long time, this galaxy has been primarily, and secondarily ruled by examples of masculine power. When the Empire had both the Emperor and the Senate, we had a balanced set of power. The big shaft _and_ a rider to guide it. Under the Republic… well, that was almost all rider and very little shaft.”

“So, this… wedding… is us showing off we’ve got more to offer than a big army.”

“Exactly. Kylo appears to be interested in moving in the direction of more balanced power. His idea of markets and places where people can make deals in safety means bringing some level of feminine power into play, and this is a good way to show the galaxy that, with the Order, you can have it all.”

“Or at least, hire it?”

“Certainly. Traditionally feminine power comes in the flavor of communication, nuance, status. So, say, back in the days of the Republic, exceptionally ornate clothing, well above and beyond the level of what’s fashionable now, was part of the game. It was about showing off status. Kylo’s coffee is of a similar vein. The things we do to show off that we have great worth.”

Rey winces. “I’m going to be terrible at this.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to study, learn the tropes, and then we’re going to figure out how to bend them to your own strengths. You do not have to parade around in a billion credits worth of the fanciest jewelry ever to be forged in this galaxy to show off feminine power. You just have to understand that that’s what the woman you’re meeting with is doing when she does it. And then you’ve got to decide how to manage her expectations, because she’s likely going to judge your status by the amount of sparkly things you wear.”

“That I can do.”

Ellie sips her tea. “I have… a few thoughts in this direction. One of the perks of power is the ability to define status. One king of old, in a very classic feminine power move, set up a court of staggering flamboyance and wealth, and then forced his courtiers to move there. In order for them to ‘keep up appearances’ and keep abreast of the fashion, they spent money like it was water—” Ellie backtracks on that. Rey’s from a desert. Water _matters_ to her. “Spent money like sand. Let it just flow through their fingers, and for a while, they could do that, but money runs out, and it did, so he started loaning them money so they could keep up with the extravagance, and before too long, most of his ‘courtiers’ were busy coveting each other’s tailors, planning expensive outfits and parties, one upping each other in fripperies, and in debt to him.

“In less than ten years, he bound them to him, and neutered their power, more effectively than any war could have, and did it without killing anyone.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died old, fairly well-liked, in charge of a united empire, in his own bed, with a mistress who was seventy years his junior. Most men would say he played the game very well. Granted, it didn’t last. He loaned money to his lords, and they spent like crazy. That loaned money wasn’t enough. They needed more and more gold and jewels and status symbols, but they were broke. So they changed the laws; they could demand goods and services, but they didn’t have to pay for them. Eventually, the men and women who made the fripperies that counted in the status game grabbed those courtiers and cut their heads off, but… Assuming you remember to pay your bills, that’s a move that can be used quite effectively to neutralize your enemies.”

“Ah…” Rey tries to begin to imagine Kylo dripping in silks and ‘fripperies.’ The image won’t form, not the least because she isn’t entire sure what ‘fripperies’ even are.

“That’s not likely to be the version of that play that you and Kylo will try. But, eventually, it will be up to you to define status beyond a big army. Think on that, and what matters to you.”

Rey nods. “And… a big lavish wedding is a way to do that?”

“Certainly. Though, for this first bit, that’s the… summit of the mountain. Yes, fancy, lavish wedding is part of the Handsome Prince and His Lady story, but being out, and about, and seen is a bigger part of it. As you do that, you get to highlight what matters to you. And you get to see what matters to everyone else.”

Rey raises an eyebrow. “By meeting a million people and…”

“Yes, that, but it’s also traditional, when one is invited to a wedding, to send a _gift_ as well. You’ll be able to see what matters to people, and how they esteem you by reading the gifts.”

Rey’s not sure how she feels about that. Excited at the idea of presents, daunted at the idea of decoding presents. She doesn’t exactly shift the topic, but she gets Ellie talking more, “What were your other thoughts about status?”

“I was thinking about the Jedi. I… obviously didn’t follow them too closely. And, I realize that, for obvious reasons, this might not be where to go with Kylo, but… Status doesn’t just have to be about wealth. It can be about knowledge, or holiness, or… wherever you place it.”

Rey thinks about that, and feels what Ellie’s telling her. “The Jedi had a very balanced masculine and feminine power structure.”

“The saber and the book, exactly. The Empire bound masculine power in the form of the Emperor and his army, to the feminized power of the Senate. In as much as the Republic had a military before Palpatine got his hands into the game, it was the Jedi Knights. They were the blade the senate used to enforce the Senate’s will.”

“I…” Rey’s never thought about the idea of the Jedi and how their power base worked in the Republic.

“Mostly, they didn’t need to use a blade. Why fight when you’ve got the mind trick at your disposal? It doesn’t work on everyone, and… as I understand it, advanced negotiating techniques often involved lightsabers.”

“Ah.”

“But, I’m thinking… There have been states in the past where power balanced between the blade and the book. Between war and holiness. And… Is that something your Maji could do?”

Rey inhales long and slow at that idea. Then sips her tea. Then puts the cup down, still thinking. Her first, immediate, knee jerk reaction could best be summed up as an all over, full body _FUCK NO._ It just… feels _wrong._

A cold, visceral, all over, wrong.

It’s a good two breaths before she reaches out with _And how closely are you following this conversation?_ Because, after all, that’s a level of reaction that doesn’t quite feel like _her._

She gets a sheepish thought back of _It’s a really boring report._

_You know, you could just come in here._

A minute later the door slides open.

“Kylo,” Ellie says. She nudges the other chair at the table, and sees he’s carrying his own cup of coffee in. “Well, on the upside, I’m going to assume you two had a little chat about this, but Rey, it didn’t get to your face. I was thinking I’d just hit you _very_ wrong with the Maji idea.”

Kylo sits down. “You hit me very wrong with it.”

“Oh. You can… listen in?”

“Apparently,” Rey says. “Granted, I didn’t notice how closely he was listening.”

Kylo rolls his eyes a little. “It was a _really_ boring report.” He sets his cup down, and kisses his wife’s hair before sitting next to her. _And you are not boring._

Ellie adds a splash more to her own tea, and then says, “Ah, well, tell me why using the Maji as a status symbol hits you wrong. It’s your empire, we might as well tailor it to your liking.”

“It’s not my empire.”

Ellie snorts, delicately, but it is certainly a snort, at that.

“Fine,” Kylo’s eyes narrow. He’s about to leap up and pace, so Rey reaches out and takes his hand. He calms as she touches him. “I was the Jedi who could barely master the status symbols.”

“I…” Ellie looks confused. “You… Your title was Master?” He can feel she knows that was his title and she’s confused now.

“Yes, but probably not the way you meant it. Back in the Old Jedi, a Master was… on the council and… Yoda or so, right?”

She nods.

“Yeah, well, under Luke it was literal. I had mastered enough skills to pass them on and teach them. I was a Master of enough of the different Jedi skills, but not all of them, and I likely would have embarrassed the shit out of Luke if any of the old school Masters had been around.” He doesn’t say it, but Rey can feel him thinking, _and I had to fight tooth and nail for everything I mastered outside of fighting and empathy._

“Oh,” Ellie says. “Well… It was an idea. It doesn’t have to be how we do things.”

Rey’s chewing on her lip, and Ellie notices, because that’s a very Kylo gesture.

“Rey?”

She’s looking at Kylo. “If it’s about balance, this… can’t be a status thing. There can’t be… Maji Masters. Balance moves and shifts and has to flow to where it’s needed. It’s a continual discipline that has to adjust as time and circumstance change. Maybe we get better at shifting as needed, but I don’t think we master it. It’s our master, and we serve it, not the other way around.”

Kylo smiles at that, stroking her cheek.   

Ellie nods slowly at that. There are things she could say to that, mostly along the lines of the fact that anyone who claims to be in the service of some greater power that cannot be independently verified rapidly ends up lying to themselves about who’s calling the shots, but she figures that’s not exactly important right now.

She’s also rather pleased as she sees how quickly Kylo’s attention snaps to her on that one. She’s not sure if he’s getting better at reading her, or if he’s getting more comfortable with her knowing exactly how sensitive he is, either way, it’s good to have a map of exactly how much of the unspoken conversation he’s getting.

Just to confirm things, Kylo says, “With you, probably just about all of it.”

“Ah…”

“So, just say it,” Rey adds. She caught Kylo’s attention to Ellie more than what Ellie was thinking.

“In my, vast, long, and extremely jaded experience, when someone says that they’re acting in the service of something that’s uncheckable, they’re acting in the service of whatever it is they happen to want.”

Rey looks like she just bit into something sour. The image of Cassie’s Presbyter comes to mind so quickly and vividly, she winces. “That’s not…”

“You, I know,” Ellie says. “And, speaking of older and jaded, but where you are now, eager and earnest, that’s generally where the people who end up serving their own desires started, too. Believe it or not, back in the day, the Emperor, when he was still a Chancellor, genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing to make the galaxy better, not just empower himself.”

“Even better,” Rey mutters.

Kylo perks up at that. “Ten years. Did we mention that? Eleven really. We’ll stay for the first two election cycles then we’re out of here.”

Ellie’s expression is cool. “You’re hellbent on not being the Emperor, aren’t you?”

“I think the entirety of the galaxy is better off with me not trying to be the Emperor, but even if it wasn’t, _I’m… we’re_ better off, so, we’re not going there.”

Ellie doesn’t sigh, but she does think, takes a moment to understand what Kylo isn't saying, and then sip her tea, and then nod. “Okay. The fact that you’re not trying to provide one version of the good life that supposedly fits everyone does help to limit the damage you can do with this. The time cap definitely will.” Ellie sips her tea thinking further. “I suppose, that could be a status of sorts. Tolerance. Cosmopolitanism. The ability to flow with the mores of those around you. There were a few philosophers back in the day who wrote about the idea of the rights of man… The idea that you are a master who _serves_ his people. That one comes, does his job, and then goes home... That could be part of what makes status for you.”

Kylo smirks a bit. “Our idea of status is the ability to offer a warm and generous welcome to anyone, no matter how low status they may be?”

Ellie offers a sharp smile. “Well, anyone who can pay the docking fee.”

Rey inclines her head. It’s crystallizing for her. “Status comes from being a sentient being. Anything else is the sweet at the end of the meal.”

“Exactly. Though, generally speaking, it’s the sweet at the end of the meal that people fuss over.” Ellie sips her tea again. “It’s certainly an idea. I’m wondering how we translate it into… images… for lack of a better word.”

“Question for Jon?” Kylo asks.

“Mirina more likely. She’s got an even better feel for how things look than he does. Plus, it’s a good idea, at least on occasion, for him to do his actual job.”

Neither of them miss Ellie thinking that Jon’s job is not, in fact, just to lead them around and help them figure out how to look like rulers.

“Okay, so we’re not entirely sure what, exactly, it is we’re showing off with this, other than a general sense of…” Ellie lets that trail off.

Neither Rey nor Kylo picks it up with their own ideas.

“Grandeur? Opulence? Functionality? Hospitality? Aggressive egalitarianism? What are we doing to make this look like something people want to be part of?” Ellie says.

Rey doesn’t roll her eyes. They’ve been over this, but she understands Ellie’s trying to get them to condense the bigger ideas down into smaller, more easily digested ones.

“Tolerance,” Kylo finally says.

“And what does that look like to you?” Ellie asks.

Rey tilts her head a bit, looking at Kylo. He bites his lip. He’s said it to her, and they’ve been over the basic idea a bit, but saying it feels odd. “A market. Or a city… A grand floating city, where people can come and find the life they need.”

Rey’s nodding. “Where people can come and live and trade and… be.”

“It’s voluntary. That’s a big part of it. People come to us. Not the other way around.”

Ellie does’t say it, but she doesn’t stop herself from thinking _the unwanted child craves approval._ Kylo masters his face and acts like he didn’t catch that. “Well, the wedding invites will certain go a ways toward that. We’ll invite them, and they’ll come. With any luck, the right ones will stay. We’ve got the space. Setting it up as an open festival, anyone who wants can come. Offer personal invitations to the ceremony and whatever the main after party is. Something for people you want actual one on one contact with.”

“But… wander around and meet people the next day, or after… Like the First Year party?” Rey says.

“You actually want to do that?” Kylo asks her.

She shrugs a bit. “It’s what were selling, or… trying to encourage, right? Join the Order, we welcome everyone. That’s part of wandering around the F-Deck, not cloaked.”

He nods a bit at that. “Yeah, but…”

“Maybe,” Ellie says, “Set it up as a few days long festival…” She thinks. “Most… again, until you think of a better term for it, I’m calling it an empire. Most empires have some sort of annual celebration. Something to bring people together and give them a reason to have a good time, because they’re part of the Empire. There was Empire Day, and of course, Concordance Day, and most planets and countries have something like that, too.

"We invite anyone and everyone to come. We welcome their culture and expression thereof, but we have an over culture, as well. We are the Order, and there has to be markers of that, as well.

“The First Year party, could become an annual thing. Order Day or Days. Some sort of major celebration. When people get their citizen mark, they get the upgrade in status on the day they hit five years, but they get the badge and stripes on Order Day. Huge party, major celebrations to welcome the new citizens, everyone who can be off duty is off duty, and anyone who does have to work that day or days gets major bonuses for it.”

“And we do the wedding then? Part of the celebration?” Rey asks.

“That could be it.” Ellie’s looking at Rey’s Order of the Maji pendent. “If we’re becoming the Order of the Maji, cementing that earlier rather than later, and doing it on Order Day makes a lot of sense. If the Order of the Maji is a personal thing, it’s less of a big deal.”

It’s clear she’s asking where they’re going with that.

Kylo and Rey watch each other. Rey shakes her head slightly. “The Maji is personal. People will join when and as they like, and… Honestly, I don’t have the people to spread it too far and wide at this point.”

Kylo lays his finger on her pendent, the Maji spiral ringed by the Order hexagon. “I have the feeling this mark is something for a very select few people.”

_Jacen?_

He nods at her. _Cassie probably, too. Maybe, eventually, Jon._

“If that’s the case,” Ellie says, attracting their attention back to her, “That mark you wear will become a status symbol, whether you want it to, or not. Something rare, that belongs to people who have power or are favored will automatically become a matter of status.”

Rey sighs at that. She doesn’t want to stop visibly being Maji. She doesn’t want other people making a big deal about it, or seeking it out to gain favor. “Great.”

“Well, on the upside, most people seem to think the Maji is some sort of orphanage or school, so you will have some leeway.”

“That’s good?” Rey asks.

“Until people start pestering you, wanting to teach your children. A lot of people will probably be very happy to offer lessons for the Maji, should they desire to learn from them,” Ellie says.

Rey’s almost put off by that, then she thinks about it. “Actually… That would be good. Lots of lessons, from lots of perspectives. Find the balance between them…”

“That goes along with the idea of the Order, the place where anyone can come…” Kylo adds. He calls his data pad to hand and jots down a quick note about this being a place teachers can come to offer lessons.

Rey lets him finish his note before saying, “Except that doesn’t go well with the location of the Maji staying quiet.”

“Classes could be here. Getting them back and forth isn’t that big of an issue. Especially if not all the kids sit in on all the lessons.”

Ellie can feel that the two of them could probably go planning away with this for quite a while, and it’s true that she thinks they’ll do a better job of getting the Order set so that they can actually, enthusiastically, jump headlong into being the Handsome Prince and His Lady if they get this stuff worked out, it’s also not something she can, or probably should help with. Not this level of it.

“How about back to wedding planning? Do it at the second year festival?”

That gets Kylo and Rey back on her. They glance at each other.

“Will Jon look at me like I’ve just stabbed him in the back if I suggest doing both at once?” Kylo asks.

“Not if Mirina does most of the heavy lifting. And he’s hoping to have diplomacy done in six months, not nine.”

Rey squints. “That’s cutting it closely, isn’t it?”

Ellie shrugs a bit. “We’ll make it work.”

She and Kylo glance at each other, and also shrug.

“Now for the next bit of this, if we’re hoping to do this as way to draw people to us, it also involves both of you being out and about more. I know for a fact that Kylo routinely gets invited to diplomatic sorts of things, and, as best I can tell, right now, the Order sends out polite refusals, indicating you’re just vastly too busy for that sort of thing.”

Kylo blinks. He didn’t know that. He’s now wondering if Jon’s in charge of that, or if it’s being fobbed off on someone below him, and if so, who does that?

“But, if you two were to start to attend them…”

“Wait, is this… different from the Alderaan thing?”

“Good question, Rey. Yes, it is. The ‘Alderaan thing,’ as you put it, is a formal envoy where we’ll offer them a specific treaty. These gatherings are not informal, but the main reason for doing them is to get to know people, see who is out there, and build a stable of allies you can call upon should you need them. When we go to Alderaan, everything will be heavily scripted, and planned. We’ll know every beat of the dance before we go, and we’ll be in position to take over the tune when and as needed as well. With these sorts of meetings, you’re mostly going to be seen and be known. There will be some sort of plan in place, but it will be a list of things one does, not a list of things one intends to accomplish.”

Both Rey and Kylo blink at that.

“Alderaan and the like are the sorts of meetings one attends _after_ going to the sorts of parties I’m talking about. You’ll begin to get a sense of who is out there, what they want, and how to offer our own skills and services in ways that will bring them into our sphere.”

“Parties?” Rey asks.

“Well... Sort of. They'll likely have a name like 'summit' or 'collegium.' And people like Jon won't identify them as parties. But... Situations where you and other powerful people gather together, generally in a relaxed or playful sort of way, and get to know each other better. Important conversations can happen at these things, but generally they exist to get people into place so they can have important conversations, later.”

“Dinners?” Kylo asks.

“Yes, much like what we did here. Some of them will be much fancier than others. Many of them will be built around ‘fun’ things, because the ‘fun’ thing is the draw, but the real reason to attend is to meet people and be seen. Some of them exist to talk and meet with people about pressing problems in the galaxy and how to solve them. So, you go, sit, listen in on different lectures and presentations, and then talk and mingle. If you’re looking to get into the problem-solving business, those are likely the sorts of things you’ll want to attend the most of.”

Kylo and Rey don’t exactly wince, but neither of them look enthusiastic.

Ellie thinks for a moment. “Before, when I was talking about balancing the book with the saber, I was talking about religious books, what about… art, literature, knowledge in general? Could that be part of your ideal of the values of the Order?”

Kylo and Rey glance at each other. Rey nods a bit, and Kylo does, too. “That could be, what’s got you thinking in that direction?”

“Well, they’re not _all_ pressing problems of the galaxy. We can send you off to summits on art, music, literature, and the like. You can visit libraries and temples to information.”

“Cinema?” Rey asks.

“I’m sure there has to be things like that. They have festivals for food, wine… Culture. Is that more the sort of thing you two can go to, be seen, and not look like someone’s holding you at blaster point?”

Kylo quirks a bit of smile. “It’s significantly more likely.”

“That would blend well with the everyone is welcome at the Order idea,” Rey says. “We go, soak up other cultures, invite them to come and join ours.”

“I like that,” Ellie says. “We can arrange for that to be a good deal of you being out and about, but it likely can’t be all of it.

“Part of the idea of the Handsome Prince and His Lady is both of you being walking advertisements for the Order. Which means people need to _see_ you. That sort of festival or function can take care of that.

“However, from a straight diplomacy sense…” She sips her tea and back tracks. “Okay, there are several ways to deal with problems. Previous to you taking over, Kylo, the First Order dealt with problems by shooting them. This is effective but not necessarily where you want to go. Since then, we’ve dealt with all of our problems in house. This can, also, be effective, but it’s limiting. The best mind to conquer the job may not be wearing an Order uniform, and if that’s the case, right now, we’re just out of luck. So, part of why you go to these things is so you can meet people, so when problems arise, or opportunities, you know who to call to see about fixing them.”

“Networking?” Kylo remembers his mother talking about that.

“Very much so.”

“And this is the sort of thing the Prince’s Lady specializes in?” Rey asks. “And… we’re selling solutions, or at least a place and security so people can come to their own solutions, so we show up at things like the all the problems in the galaxy meetings and… make it clear that we can… fix things?”

“Often. How are you with languages?”

Kylo winces, but Rey looks pleased.

“She’s amazing.” That pleases her, too. “I’m…” he rolls his eyes, “okay at reading and understanding a half dozen common languages, but only accomplished in Galactic Standard, and mediocre at speaking anything else.”

“Good, Rey. The ability to speak in whatever the native tongue is, and blend into the mode of their cultures, that, too can be a status symbol. A sign of feminine power. Part of tolerance and welcome, is that we’ll put the effort in to make ourselves match local mores.” Ellie smiles a bit. “And of course, like you did with the K’Aran, you can… offer your own particular twist on the situation.”

“Balanced power?” Rey asks. She may have looked like a K’Aran woman, as much as her body could, but she didn’t exactly act like one.

“If you so desire. There’s nothing that says you have to be a paragon of _just_ feminine power. It’s… Well, Kylo’s not exactly the image of feminine power, at least not how most of the human societies in this galaxy understand it, and he’s done such a good job of burning the ideal of Master Ren, who will come down and personally eviscerate anyone who attempts to hurt him or his into the conscious of the galaxy, I don’t think it’s ideal to try and temper that by having both of you seek a balanced power position. That said, there’s no reason the Order can’t or shouldn’t be primarily masculine power coded.”

“Or that’s part of why Jon’s got an actual job,” Kylo says.

“Or you can fob more of the job of feminine-coded power plays toward Jon. He’ll be good at it.”

“Except the parts he won’t be?” Rey asks. “You said…” Rey remembers Ellie talking about the bits of feminine power that Jon couldn’t get into by virtue of his sex and rank.

“Yes. There are parts he’s not ideally suited for, but that’s nothing we need him to do. And that’s not really part of what we’re talking about here. This is, how we build an image to give people an idea of what it is we’re doing.” Ellie taps her cup. “Everyone is welcome, sentients are the only thing in the galaxy that really matter, we’re here to provide anyone who wants it a chance at their good life…”

Kylo and Rey are nodding along with that.

“At the rate we’re opening them now, just for starters, every single recruiting station should get visited by at least one of you. That’s where you get people, so that’s where you should be going. Eventually, they’ll be spread too far to effectively do that, but right now, that’s a bedrock sort of thing.

“You should be regularly visiting the training camps, and your other ships.”

“Schiff says that it annoys people to have the Boss on ship,” Kylo adds, the idea of touring all of his ships is something he’s toyed with in the past, but didn’t move on.

“It often does, so you make sure they’ve got a lot of notice ahead of time so they can spruce everything up. Still, go. Talk to people. Be interested. Don’t kill anyone unless you’re certain everyone around them wants them gone.”

“Visit all of the planets under the Order?” Rey asks.

“You have the idea, but that’s not doable. Any new ones joining up, absolutely go to,” Ellie adds.

“Why not doable?” Kylo asks.

Ellie blinks slowly, and then it’s her turn to rub her lips together, looking embarrassed. “Kylo, do you… know what we’ve done to probably at least two thirds of the planets we control?”

Both he and Rey wince, hard. _Hays Minor._ Neither of them knows for sure which of the two of them thought it first.

“C8?” Kylo calls out.

A moment later the droid is in their room. “Yes, sir?”

“I need a report listing the all the planets that have ever been under our control, and what we’ve done with and to them, and… probably some sort of suggestions for how to… apologize for it, if possible.”

Ellie’s shaking her head. “Don’t even try. Focus on the ones that are still habitable. You killed the person who gave the orders that destroyed the other planets, that’s all the apology that needs to happen.”

C8 waits patiently. He doesn’t take orders from Ellie.

“Just get me the list of planets and what we did to them.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll put it on your desk when I get it.”

“Thank you, C8.”

The droid’s almost out of their rooms, when Rey’s got an idea, “C8…”

“Yes, Lady.”

“Make sure that report covers how people are treated there, and if they’re part of the Order citizen class…” She looks to Ellie. “You said as long as his men aren’t starving, the man at the top is allowed his pleasures. Are the people living on those planets considered part of Kylo’s men?”

Ellie’s mouth opens, and then closes. “If you’d be willing to copy Pat on that report, C8, I’d appreciate it.”

C8 looks to Kylo, who nods.

“Done, Lady Kinear.”

Ellie nods, and then turns to Kylo and Rey. “It’s likely a good idea to do the research, see what’s going on on those planets. We’re so… focused on your ships, that they tend to get forgotten. I know they pay taxes, and… I know that the reason why so many of them aren’t habitable any longer is that they were mined to their cores for supplies.”

“Great,” Kylo says quietly. “Mined to their cores for supplies, and then blown to molecules when you and yours took out StarKiller.”

Rey shrugs. “Not my fault Snoke let Hux build something big enough to suck all of the power of a star and turn it into a weapon. No sane person could let something like that continue to exist.”

He kisses the back of her hand. _You aren’t wrong._

Ellie adds in, “Visiting the habitable planets, and doing what we can to get them back to functional is another opportunity to show the galaxy how you aren’t Snoke. How you and the Order are different from the First Order. It’s a way to make people want to be part of this. The First Order came in and ruined things. The Order returns and puts them as close to back to right as possible.”

“And somehow, we’ve got to pay for this. That’s the boring report I was reading. Income projections for the free trade lanes.” Rey raises an eyebrow, and Kylo shakes his head. “We make more on it than we spend to keep them up, but not as much as I’d like. Schiff tells me that the price we’ve got is the sweet spot, though. Raise it higher, and it makes running the blockade worth the risk. Which increases the cost of maintaining the blockade. Which means we make less money on it.” He sighs, long and loud.

She and Ellie nod.  “Yes, paying for all of this is always going to be an issue. So, perhaps, first and foremost, we aim for getting you to as many places where, first of all, they pay the expenses, and secondly, you get to meet people with problems, and offer them ways to fix those problems. For a price.”

“How many of these things are there?” Rey asks.

“Smaller local ones, for say individual planets, we could probably hook you up with twenty a day, every day, for the rest of your life. Bigger ones, say for systems, or system alliances, there are likely a good two a month, and we’ll see what we can do about getting you to all of them. Galaxy-wide ones are one to three a year, and you _will_ attend them.”

“And we…”

“Go to them, look pretty, listen, and offer a place and time to make problems go away. Let them know that you have the biggest sword available, and by hiring yours they can put theirs away. Next year, when our diplomacy wing is fully into play, we’ll see what we can do about hosting a few of these.” Ellie sips her tea. “Especially if people see you starting to attend things like these, once those wedding invitations go out, people will also consider this an opportunity to see, be seen, network, and seek out alliances new and old. It’ll be _good._ ”

Kylo and Rey sort of look at each other, and back to Ellie, and back at each other. Finally, Rey says, “Good?”

Ellie nods, certain. “Good. Now, fun stuff, the book to go with the sword, how often do you think you’d like to do things like that?”

“How often could we?” Rey asks.

“I’m sure that we could set it up so that you did nothing but go to things like that. However many you want to attempt, we can get you to.”

“Maybe we could… try a few… see if we actually like them, and then figure that out?” Rey asks.

Ellie’s expression indicates that she thinks that’s wise. “We can set that up. We can also see if we can cross-reference fun gatherings in places where you’ve got recruiting stations opening, and see if we can mesh that sort of thing together.” Ellie taps her comm and records a quick note to make sure that gets taken care of. Then she makes another note to meet with Jon at some point to talk about putting ‘fun, art stuff’ on the diplomatic floors. She glances back to the two of them. “After all, if we seek it out, we should also offer it. This mammoth pile of metal could be a place of art and science and learning.”

Kylo quietly says, “I think I’d like that.”

Ellie offers him a gentle smile. Then she says, also quietly, “Was… Ben… a scholar?”

Kylo shrugs a bit. “Maybe. Sometimes. He liked books and plays and poems.” 

“Calligraphy,” Rey says.

That triggers a memory for Ellie. “I haven’t thought of this in a long time, but the Shoikan Knights… They were swordsmen and horsemen. Literal metal swords and…” It’s clear neither of them know what a horse it. “Large quadrupeds that humans can ride. And, to be a properly accomplished knight, a man had to have mastery of the sword, of non-armed combat, of riding, philosophy, poetry, history, and at least one visual art. Bits of pottery and calligraphy survive, and are considered highly sought after collector’s items.”

Kylo pulls his datapad over and makes another note for himself to read up on that. “They balanced their fight with… making beautiful things?”

“That was the idea. I think. There was a fairly complicated philosophical grounding about balancing destruction with creation but I don’t remember much of that.”

“What happened to them?” Rey asks.

Ellie offers a tiny, tight half smile. “Horses and metal swords were no match for Stormtroopers. They fought long and hard and bravely. And they kept the Imperial Army busy for month, but in the end the Empire won. They worshiped a God-King, and he was executed by Imperial decree a decade before either of you were born. There were rumors that his grandchildren got out, and took the heart of their culture with them, but rumor’s all that’s been found of them. All that’s left is ruins, books, a few bits of art, and the stories of survivors.”

“Like Alderaan,” Kylo says.

Ellie nods.

“Why did the Emperor go after them?” Rey asks.

“Because they would not bend to him. They didn’t join the Republic, which wasn’t an issue. Not really. They were willing to trade with members of the Republic, and allowed safe passage through their space. Then they wouldn’t join the Empire, seeking the same deal. The Emperor was not impressed with that deal. He wanted it to be clear that there was no power above him, certainly not a self-named GodKing.”

They’re quiet after that, then Kylo says, “I don’t want that.” He’s shaking his head. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. That’s… the exact opposite of who and what we’re going to be. Whatever we need to do to make it clear that that’s not us, that’s what we’re doing.” 

Ellie nods at that. “I’d say, the easiest way to make that clear is to, just, not do it. Don’t conquer.” A slow smile spreads across her face. “That said, I suppose, if we really do move into the sword for hire business people will wish to buy our services to conquer for themselves. I suppose it’s possible that, for a small but appropriately sized fee, one could buy a contract from us guaranteeing that we won’t take a contract from anyone else to engage in conquering for hire.”

Rey and Kylo don’t even have to check in with each other. That one’s a no-go. “I’m pretty sure we don’t take contracts to conquer for hire,” Rey says.

Ellie’s smile is gentle. “Of course not, dear. Trust me, they will never, ever come to us and say, ‘We covet our neighbors lands and wealth, we’ll pay you well to take it for us.’ Any and everyone who comes to us will have good justifications. They always do.”

Kylo sighs. “A place to negotiate, the ability to escrow goods, security for meetings, contract enforcement, and defensive military force.”

“And as soon as you draw that line, someone will hire us, have us on their borders, attack the hell out of their neighbors, and then retreat behind us. They will find ways to manipulate you, or the situation. Either we take contracts from everyone, highest bidder gets the might, or we might as well not do it, because no one, not even you, have the brains and power to figure out the right side of every, or often, any conflict.”

Kylo grits his teeth. “The Qualee.”

“Exactly. Every action will ripple well beyond any possible way to see. People can buy our security. They can buy our neutrality. They can buy our forces if you like. But if you start picking and choosing who to work with things are going to get out of hand very quickly. Highest bidder wins may not be the most ethically pleasant situation, but it is clean. It’s true that everyone can’t get credits, but it’s also true that _anyone_ can, and especially if you offer a good price to not take contracts against people, that’ll be the easiest way to sort them out. If they need us badly enough, they’ll find the credits.” 

“This is not where I expected our afternoon to go,” Rey says.

“I think it was useful, though,” Ellie says. “We’ve all got a somewhat more concrete idea of what the eventual Palace of the Order looks like, so that helps. And we’ve got more of a plan in place to make sure that when those wedding invitations go out, getting one will be a status symbol, and attending an even bigger one.”

“So, what happens next?” Rey asks.

“Next,” Ellie replies. “I have a feeling we’ll be meeting with Mirina to get more of an idea of how this looks. We’ll make sure Jon’s got a heads up to start getting you two out and about more. And, of course, you and I, and General Threepio, I think, will be attending Alderaan the week after next, so we’ll be getting ready for that.”

“And… I’m not part of any of that, right?” Kylo says.

Ellie nods. She also checks her chrono. “I don’t mean to rush, but…”

“Go,” Rey nods to the door, and Kylo, vaguely remembering something from childhood, stands up and walks her out.

When he’s back, he sits next to Rey, and says, “I don’t mind not really being involved with the formal wedding stuff.”

She rolls her eyes. “Were you just hovering in the back of my head listening to everything?”

“ _Really boring._ And… sort of. You’re vastly more interesting to me than income projections, especially ones that aren’t as high as I want them to be.”

She smiles at that. “What if I want you to be?”

“Then I will, but… I have a feeling Mirina and Ellie will just glare at me for being somewhere I don’t belong.”

“And you’ve had enough stern women glare at you for a lifetime?”

“By the time I was seven.” He squeezes her hand. “I do want to be part of whatever it is we do for our family. That one matters to me.”

She nods at that. “Good.” They’re both quiet for a beat. “When do you want to do it?”

He opens and closes his mouth. “Uh… Shit. I…” A small, long ago thought wanders into his mind. “It’s customary for people to take some time off after a wedding. Go off, do fun stuff. How about we get the monster out of the way, take a few days to collapse and recuperate, and then do the one for us?”

She thinks about that, and then kisses him. “Nope. Let’s put ourselves and our loves first, do the fun one when we’re fresh and rested and then take a few days, rest up, and go take care of the monster.”

He grins at her. “I like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Guys,
> 
> So, it's the end of summer. Whoo hoo... (Flat voice.) 
> 
> Ergh... Okay, I hate writing about this stuff, but... I'm in the weeds. Summer (since we've had kids and they've been in school) is always hard for me, because my little depressed introvert self uses writing as a self-care thing, and oh, wait, the little boogers are home, being kids, which they are supposed to be (what with being kids and all.) But all kids, all the time, who constantly want to do stuff with you and be entertained and whatnot frazzles me something fierce.
> 
> So, I've written, over the last ten weeks, maybe... I don't know, 25,000 words. And yeah, that sounds like a lot, but realize I've done just over a million since Dec of '17, and you'll get this is a dry spell for me.
> 
> So, what's that mean? First of all, any kind and encouraging words you feel like bouncing my way will be VERY appreciated. It's the end of summer, my emotional reserves are low enough I can see the bottom of the barrel though them, and... Yeah, we're almost at better, school starts in three days... Almost... There...
> 
> Second of all, this is the last of the *finished* chapters. This summer blew through my entire finished reserve. Now, I'm not planning on a hiatus right now, because the little boogers are going back to school soon, and while this is the last *finished* chapter, I've got like... 50-85% done on the next five, and probably a good 200 pages of fiction on top of that, and a plan. So, with any luck, I can build my finished reserve back up, but... They may be coming a little slower. Or not. We'll see how long it takes to get my head on right and my fiction mojo flowing again.
> 
> Anyway, that's the update over here. I hope you're all having a better Labor Day weekend than I am. Love ya, Keryl


	40. New Alderaan: The Queenmaker

3/22/2

 

Technically, General Threepio is not on the list of diplomats getting a copy of the New Alderaan Non-Aggression treaty.

That lasted exactly .00098 seconds, which is the amount of time it took him to find out that he was not on the list of diplomats getting a copy of the New Alderaan Non-Aggression treaty. Then his name went to the top of the list of people not just getting a copy, but who had to sign off on it as well.

Which is a good thing, because some idiot, and he’s got an awfully good idea of who the idiot in question is, formally relinquished the use of the name Ben Organa-Solo as a bid to sweeten the deal. Likely because said idiot, hating that name, didn’t consider letting it go to be any sort of issue.

But said idiot is bloody well keeping a hold of that name, at least if Threepio has anything to say about it, and since he promoted him to General to do things exactly like this, he’s damn well got a say in it.

 

 

* * *

3/24/2

“Master Ren.”

Kylo is beyond surprised to see Threepio in his office. He not only can’t imagine why he’s here, but he also can’t read it off the droid. His thoughts are moving much to fast for Kylo to get a sense of anything beyond annoyance.

“General…”

“I’ve modified the treaty Rey taking to New Alderaan.”

That’s… well, he likely should have expected something like that. New Alderaan is the sort of thing that would have gotten Threepio’s attention.

“Okay… Modified it how?”

“Struck the paragraph formally rescinding your birth name.”

Kylo blinks at him, and the annoyance coming off of him now mirrors the annoyance coming off of Threepio, but he tries to rein it in. He has Threepio here for a reason, so… “I don’t want the name. It’s not mine… It’s… not me. And she thought so little of it, she bargained away my birthright claim, so… why keep the name?”

Again, Kylo can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be able to feel Threepio, but he gets a sense of exasperation off the droid.

“Do you know when your mother signed that treaty, the one where she relinquished her birthright and supposedly yours?”

“No.”

Threepio fiddles around with his datapad for a moment and then pulls up the agreement. “Check the date.”

He’s pulled up a copy of the document where Leia Organa, Princess of New Alderaan gave up her claim to both the throne and her, and more importantly for this discussion, _his_ , royalty. There is a date on it, he recognizes it, but… It doesn’t mean anything to him. It’s just a day, shortly after the Concordance celebrations of ABY 23.

“I don’t get why it matters.”

More exasperation off of Threepio. Kylo can feel that if he could roll his eyes, he’d have them so far back he’d be looking at his brain... central processing unit… whatever is in the inside of his head.

Which is annoying Kylo to no end. “Look, pretend for a moment that you are aware of the fact that my mother tossed me aside like her democratic principals as soon as I became inconvenient, and that I did not spend my childhood learning how to do this political stuff, and that this date doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s not my birthday. It’s close, but… Three days after my eighteenth birthday on a treaty _I wasn’t consulted about_ ,” and he’s still angry about that, because it was _his_ fucking birthright she signed away, “means _nothing_ to me.”

“She did not throw you away,” Threepio hisses.

Kylo wasn’t aware Threepio could even make that sound. “Uh huh… You know what I’ve noticed since I’ve let people know what my birth name is? Ben Solo didn’t vanish at the age of twenty-two; he vanished at the age of eight. Poe, her personal security, didn’t know who she was visiting. Barely knew I existed. These Organas… They didn’t know I was still alive because the last time they heard anything about me was when she signed that paper, five years before I defected from Luke. So, don’t give me any bantha shit about not being thrown away.”

“She was protecting you!”

Kylo slams his fist against his desk, glaring at Threepio. “Not from anything I needed to be protected from!” He’s about to leap up and push the droid back, hit him, too, because there’s so much of his mother coming off of Threepio right now. But Threepio won’t stand for that. Do it once, and he’ll leave, and he _needs_ what Threepio can offer. Like useful advice on fucking New Alderaan. Kylo bites his lip, makes himself look away, makes himself settle back into his chair. His voice is sharp, hard, but calmer when he continues, “Now, because her idea of ‘protecting’ didn’t involve me being trained in skills I’d sorely need, like, for example, whatever the fuck it is you’re trying to draw my attention to without outright saying it, I don’t know what you want me to see. So, stop being a shaft and just _tell me._ ”

He absolutely knows that Threepio would blink if he could. He just stands there for a moment, shocked.

“Stop looking stunned. You’re fluent in over six million forms of communication, I know for a fact you understood what I just said to you.”

“No one’s ever called me a shaft before.”

Kylo snorts. “Stop acting like one, and I won’t do it again.” Then he sniggers, quietly, and thinks to himself, _dildo._

 _Do I really want to know what’s going on?_ Rey thinks back to him.

_Probably not. I didn’t mean to project that._

_Ah… I’ll let you get back to it then._

_Thanks. If I remember, I’ll tell you about it later._

_Uh huh… Dildo jokes…_

_Yeah… Just another day with General Threepio._

He feels her giggle a little, seeing how he must have come up with that, and then her mind recedes from his.

“If you’re done communing with Mistress Rey...”

Kylo mentally glares at himself. He has not, as of yet, apparently mastered _not_ making it clear when he’s chatting with Rey. “Yes, I am. What’s the point of this date?”

“It is, as you noticed, close to, but not your birthday.”

He nods. “Yeah. Three days later. Was she tied up in some Concordance celebration, couldn’t get out of it, so signed this after? Her last to-do as Princess Leia?” He really wishes that less sarcastic vitriol colored that last sentence, but it did, and he can’t take it back, so…

“She certainly explained it like that. And they certainly understood it that way. Likely because they didn’t know your birthday. If they had, they would have demanded she sign immediately.”

“Great. I _still_ don’t get why the fact that this was signed three days after I turned eighteen is important.”

“It matters, _Prince Ben_ , because, on Concordance Day, ABY 23, you turned eighteen, making you, by the laws of Alderaan, legally an adult. Which meant, that as of Concordance Day, ABY 23, your mother was no longer your legal guardian, and no longer had any standing to sign anything for you, let alone relinquish your right to the throne of Alderaan. The day you turned eighteen, you were legally the second in line for the throne of Alderaan, and when your mother abdicated her position, it was _after_ you were legally an adult, meaning you are legally the legitimate heir to the throne of Alderaan, and she bloody well did it intentionally.”

Kylo blinks at that. “I… didn’t know.”

Threepio’s more or less vibrating with _well you should have_ but he doesn’t say it.

Kylo feels his eye twitch. “Really? How? I didn’t know about that treaty until after it was signed. She certainly didn’t mention it to me. Luke kept us away from the news. _You_ knew about it and apparently never thought to wander over to Luke’s and say anything to _me_ about it. Snoke told me about it, and you can bet he enjoyed that. And on top of that, again, no one ever thought that it would be even remotely useful for me to learn things like when you legally became an adult in Alderaanian society, let alone what that might have had to do with me.” He’s glaring again, at the mental image of his mother, who he finally, after three days, got on the holo, so he could righteously yell at her about this. She’s looking _annoyed_ at him because he was yelling at her about it. Then _concerned._ That’s utterly obnoxious, deep, anxious _concern_ when she realized that there was no way he should have been able to know about the contract, because no one within a light year of him knew about it.

He looks up at Threepio, annoyed at him, too. For acting like he wasn’t part of this. Not like he was some sort of innocent bystander. Chewie at least owns up to the fact that he had a hand in the disaster that was Ben’s childhood. If Threepio’s even aware of the idea that he had a hand in it, he’s keeping it hidden. “I’ve never seen New Alderaan. Remember? Not like it was my summer home as a child. She kept me so far out of things; I didn’t know I was Prince Ben until I was eighteen. Until it was gone. All those years… I mean, I knew she was Princess Leia, and I knew she was from Alderaan, but that was ancient history, and… It wasn’t anything real. It didn’t matter. She was Senator Organa, and that was that, and Alderaan was just… a thing that died a long time before I was born. And suddenly, it’s not, I’m actually Prince Ben, and there’s this whole planet I should have a birthright too. That I should have memories of. That I should have known. A history and culture and life that never more than brushed against mine, but it should have been _mine_.

“And it was gone before I ever got to even get to know it, and the only thing she could muster when I was angry about it was annoyance and fear that I’d somehow found out about it.”

Threepio cocks his head a bit. “How did you find out?”

“I learned it because Snoke was in my head, taunting me about how my mother didn’t think I was good enough to be trusted with that. How I was too dark, too unstable, too evil for it. How she denied me my birthright, because she didn’t think I was fit for it. And, maybe if the bloody thing hadn’t been hidden from me my whole life, I might not have believed it, but you know what, when no one ever tells you anything, it’s really hard not to believe the one person who is saying something.” His teeth are gritted, and he’s breathing harder than he’d like. And he almost, _almost_ wishes Threepio would tell him that he had it wrong, that that’s _not_ why she kept him out of things.

But he doesn’t. Instead he says, “Then I’m saying it, now. Monarchs in Alderaan are chosen from a collection of people with a blood claim, who then go on to complete the Day of Demand trials. As of right now, you have the strongest blood claim to the throne of Alderaan of anyone living. Your claim was not relinquished when you were eighteen, and you are _not_ giving it up.”

“Why not? I don’t want it.” Eighteen-year-old Ben wanted it desperately. He craved the idea of a place that wasn’t Luke’s school. Somewhere he could maybe be _good_ at something. But Ben is, as much as he can be, dead, and Prince Ben isn't so much dead as something that never existed, so... He sees no need to cling onto it. 

“Too bad. Names have power. Blood has _power._ You never know when this may come in handy, and if not for you personally, then for your children. So, you will bloody well keep your name and your title, and we are going to make it clear that you are the legitimate heir of the Alderaanian people.”

Kylo blinks again. “You’re angry.”

Threepio steps a bit closer and leans toward Kylo. And right here, right now, sitting at his desk with Threepio standing over him, eyes wide and unblinking, he’s _almost_ imposing. “Of course, I’m angry! They stole it from your mother. They had no right, no cause, no… anything. But because of the poison that was your grandfather’s name, they neutered her ability to do any good. Once they smeared her with the taint of Vader, claimed she was a fraud and a liar for using her own name, hinted that she wasn't stable enough for the job, she lost her power and credibility in the Senate. They used him to take her down, and to make themselves more powerful. And before three years were out, Snoke was rising, rising fast and steady, because she was no longer in a position to rally people to take him out.”

Kylo inclines his head. “Sounds like Snoke. Whispered the right bit of intel in the right ear. Added a bit of motivation to the right people. After all, he never forgot Vader and who his children were.”

Kylo’s fairly sure that Threepio would narrow his eyes if he could, but he can’t, so that’s that.

Kylo nods to him. “Strike the paragraph. Now tell me this. I’m sending Rey in with a non-aggression treaty, that’s apparently _also_ cementing my formal claim as a—“

“ _The”_

“legitimate heir to the Alderaanian throne, while at the same time refusing them proof of my parents. This feels like I’m making things stupidly complicated for her.”

That appears to be a concern that Threepio thinks may be warranted. He straightens back up, thinking about it, before saying, “I’m going with her, and so is Lady Kinear. By the time we get into orbit, Rey will be ready for anything and everything.”

Kylo nods at that, and spends another minute just _feeling_ Threepio. He’s been a person so long; he really is starting to feel like one. Eyes closed, Kylo would know he’s not organic, but… He’s certainly, at least on any level that matters, alive.

And living things have wants and needs. What is Threepio trying to do with this? It’s not just… holding onto the past. _Names have power._

“You want my daughter on that throne.”

Threepio’s head jerks in a way that tells Kylo he wasn’t expecting that comment. “I want the throne of Alderaan back where it belongs, in the hands of the Organa line.”

There’s something else there, deeper, less well formed, moving too fast, and Kylo can’t grab it, so he moves with what’s on the surface. “Why? We’re talking about a child who doesn’t even exist. Who might never exist.”

Threepio just looks at Kylo, and it’s clear that he absolutely believes that one day there will be a dark-haired baby girl who will go by the name of Ren, though he’ll call her Princess. “It’s the least I could possibly do for your mother. Give her back what was stolen.”

There’s an image, and for a moment, Kylo thinks it’s Leia. Young, dark hair, fine features… Curling hair… Loose, curling hair… Fine, resplendent gowns… Not Leia.

His eyes narrow. “Are you thinking of… That’s my grandmother, right?”

“Are you actually reading my thoughts?” Threepio sounds very startled at that.

“Are you actually thinking of Padme Amidala?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes, I must be. Congratulations, you’re a person.”

Threepio looks unsettled by that.

Kylo would be unsettled by Threepio’s image of Padme, but the possible future for his child matters more than whatever’s going on with the droid and his dead grandmother. “I don’t want people scheming behind the scenes, using my children as puppets.”

Threepio looks relieved to be on the future and off the past, too. “Then you best not have any, because that’s going to be the only way to avoid that fate. Since I put the odds of you and Mistress Rey not having children at one in 3,756,383,027, I might as well scheme in a direction that’s to their benefit.”

“Would it be? You have no idea where this child might come up. It’s possible I’ll be stable and well-adjusted in comparison.”

Speaking of sounds Kylo wasn’t aware Threepio could make, the little snort of derision that prefaces: “I doubt that highly. Between the lack of Snoke and Rey, your children should be stable enough to at least figurehead a functional government,” is at the top of the list.

Kylo blinks at that. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“I’d assume you’d find it so.”

Kylo thinks about that for a moment, too, and then says, “You’re really quite good at subtle insults.”

Threepio’s voice is Tatooine dry as he replies, “Most people would have found that about as subtle as your shaft comment.”

“Ah.” Kylo sits back. “Anything else?”

There’s a pause, long for an electronic mind. Not for an organic one. Then Threepio says, “Not now.”

“Good. Before you head off to New Alderaan, have Jon set you up with a uniform. If you’re going, General, you might as well look the part.”

Threepio nods, and heads off.

 

 

* * *

“Are you still in your office, Jon?” Threepio asks over his comm.

Jon looks at the pile of datapads in front of him before saying, “For the next twenty years, General.”

“Ah…” Threepio responds. “I’ve been told I need to talk to you about laying hands on an Order uniform before joining the New Alderaan delegation.”

Jon does not grit his teeth or moan at that. “Technically, no longer my department, but I’m on very good terms with the person whose department it is.”

“Yes, of course.” Threepio did in fact know that, but he was _ordered_ to see Jon, and well… He’s not exactly proud of this, but he’s still annoyed at Kylo and his attitude toward Leia, so, like any sentient droid with an attitude, he’s perfected the art of following orders exactly, and annoying the shit out of people by doing it.

“Come on down… up? I’m up from you, aren’t I?”

“Yes, Jon.”

“Great, it’ll be a long night, bring food for three… You don’t eat… two.”

“Any specific sort of food?”

“Em and I are easy. Surprise us.”

Threepio isn’t thrilled by that idea, but he figures he can ‘surprise them.’ He’s less sure about it being a pleasant surprise. “It might be a better idea to hold off on surprises until you are talking to someone who does eat?”

“Just make sure you buy it from somewhere on the F-Deck, and it’ll be fine.”

“That’s not wildly reassuring.”

Jon smiles. “You’ll do fine.” Then he pauses, and thinks. Threepio doesn’t eat. “Have you ever… bought anything before? I mean, like at a stall, not signed an order to get 50,000 tons of plastcrete delivered to the right place at the right time.”

“I’ve never purchased anything at a food cart before. I have organized and paid for entire banquets in the past.”

“Do you have a credit account with us?”

“Yes, I am fully set up as a member of the staff here.” It’s not like Threepio actually does anything with money, but… He’s a _General_ so he’s _being a general_ and Generals get both paid and good accommodations. He’s got a very nice apartment that he makes sure to go visit at least once a week, though he doesn’t exactly have a very good idea of what to do when he’s there, and an account that’s piling up credits rather quickly, because he doesn’t buy anything.

“Great. Your treat then. By the time you get up here, Em and I’ll have at least the start of an idea of what we need to do to make a uniform work for you.” Jon thinks for a moment about that, too. “Do your ankle joints bend?”

“I have a forty-five degree range of motion in my ankles.”

“That’s a yes, but not well. Okay… Uh… toes?”

“I do not have toes. Why would that be important?”

“Just figuring out what I’ve got to do to cut trousers so we can get them onto you.”

 

 

* * *

He’s staring at the bag with the food in it. It’s looped, awkwardly, over his wrist. That’s pretty much the only way he can carry it. His fingers don’t do well with holding things that are heavier than a few hundred grams, the metal surfaces mean that most things don’t have enough friction to stay put, and the strength he can muster will crush most delicate things if he’s trying to keep them from slipping against his metal finger tips. (Attempting to use his credit stick is a trial unfit for any sentient. He _can_ hold it, but it’s made of a perfectly smooth plexiplast that’s thinner than he can easily get his fingers together. Luck was with him, and he didn’t drop it, and did get it into the payment slot, but it wasn’t _easy._ Artoo's extendable dataprobe makes a lot of sense to Threepio right now.)

Threepio sighs at it. More and more these days, as his job evolves and shifts, and he does… people stuff… the physical limitations of his current body are becoming more annoying.

Artoo tells him to just chuck it and upload himself into a new body. It’d likely take less than an hour all told, and then he could be… Well, depending on the body, almost indistinguishable from the humans around him.

Given the resources at his current disposal, he could have the highest tech, most secure, most lifelike chassis on the market. No one even audits his account statements, at least, not so much as he can tell. (Not that that matters, his accounts are scrupulously kept, and when he’s found people under his command who haven’t done so, they’ve rapidly left his command. It does make him mildly uncomfortable that he doesn’t know what happens to them after he’s called the Order Security Services on them for embezzling, but… Not so uncomfortable as to check.) But, if he wanted to, he could requisition the funds for a _really_ good upgrade, and it’s likely no one would ever notice.

Except, of course, when he walked into his next meeting, and… well… _walked._ Instead of his current jerky shuffle.

He’s idly wondering about how much processing he’ll have to add to have proper locomotion. He’d definitely need to upgrade his primary processing cores if he upgrades the body. Just keeping all the parts moving the way he’d need them to would completely shoot his current processor to bits.

But… again… He _could_ do it. It’s not like he’s got to stay tied to this body.

 

 

* * *

This ship is too bloody big.

That’s the primary thought going through Threepio’s mind as he’s gotten himself (slowly, with a lot of grumbling from some of the passengers behind him) seated on the tram, and is running across the deck.

The secondary thought is that, yes, higher functionality of knees and hips and whatnot really would be useful if he’s stuck in a job that requires multiple daily commutes over and over and over.

Which brings up the tertiary thought, And, since he’s not planning on leaving… (His eyes would narrow at that if they could, and speaking of odd thoughts to be having within one’s head, the ideas of what expressions he’d be expressing if he had a face that could express, is on the top of the list.) because, apparently, when he wasn’t looking, he got fairly comfortable doing this _General_ thing, and now he’s sort of attached to it, and while he might enjoy being able to tweak Ben with the idea of leaving, he’s not, actually, going to. At least not if the status quo remains.

And under, and behind, all of those thoughts, is Kylo’s comment about being too dark and too evil and the extremely open and begging look on his face. Even Threepio could read how badly he wanted to be told that he misunderstood the situation.

Threepio certainly can lie. He’s not particularly good at it. But, if needs be, he can spin a whopper. But, in this particular case he didn’t see any need to layer a comforting lie onto Ben’s psyche. He was too dark, and too unstable, and too prone to temper fits to be allowed anywhere near the idea of Prince Ben. Snoke, apparently, got that one dead on.

There was no way a woman who lost her world, her _literal_ world, to a Force-mad darksider would ever let her own, potential, Force-mad darkside within a lightyear of any real power. And New Alderaan, in the years when Prince Ben could have been the darling baby boy and the poster child for the image of a new start, would have _adored_ a new little mascot to rally around and hang their future on.

They would have lapped up the whole thing, if Leia could have been roped into it. An actual royal family, again. Their Princess, now a Queen, a hero in her own right, and maybe not the image of her mother, but the feel of her, calm, collected, working for the good of Alderaan. And maybe they wouldn’t have known, exactly, what to do with Han, but… he was, when he worked at it, charming, and people will forgive a charming rogue, especially _their_ charming rogue, a whole lot. Add in a pleasantly tempered, plump and adorable toddler with black curls and big brown eyes… Yes, the image of it… The _fiction._

New Alderaan would have adored it.

Prince Ben, if he’d been… more stable… Less likely to burst into fits of temper… More… Less… Kylo. If he’d been _Ben…_ They would have, as best they could have, given him all the power he could have wanted, and he could and maybe would have turned that, like his mother, into a Senate seat, and from there, maybe like Palpatine, he might have turned that Senate seat into _trouble._

And until Luke could fix Ben, there was absolutely no chance of that happening, and that was that.

But Ben wouldn’t fix. The dark didn’t go away. And…

And now he’s here, in the service of _Master Ren,_ on a ship that’s too bloody big, in search of a General’s uniform, because…

Because maybe the universe needed someone really dark and twisted to actually fight Snoke.

And maybe if there had been a Prince Ben, one who took that power and used to to make a new Empire, the Hosnian system would still be around.

Because, and of this Threepio is sure, if there had been a Dark Prince Ben, and if he had shaped the senate to his will, there would not have been a shattered population scattered among the galaxy, waiting for Snoke to come and scoop them up.

And that’s a line of thinking that Threepio finds distinctly uncomfortable.

 

 

* * *

Uniforms are, distinctly, uncomfortable, too.

Dinner has been supped. Sketches have been made. Jon does appear to really enjoy shucking off his reports and job responsibilities to sit back with Emily, and begin playing with this.

There are practical considerations to think of. Mostly, his arms do not fully extend. And they have the stabilizing pneumatic on each elbow bend. He cannot, on his own, do up the traditional hooks and eyes that are used to fasten Order uniforms. Likewise, he cannot, on his own, tie anything. His hands do not have the dexterity for that. Most fabrics will, unless fastened somehow (Em’s thinking zippers or hookmesh pads) slip right off of his body. Anything they manage to keep on him has to keep his midriff clear, or else it will mess with his heat exhaust systems. And trousers need a wide enough pelvis and leg to get his feet through.

Jon’s idly sketching something Em looked at, laughed, and then said, “Booty shorts and a midriff baring tube top, really?”

“I’ll stick a giant Order hex right on the ass, put his general’s stripes vertically on the hips, and it’ll get the point across.”

And both of them are practically rolling around on the floor they’re laughing so hard.

Threepio knows there’s got to be some context on that outfit, which, actually, looks the most functional of anything they’d sketched yet, but he doesn’t know what it is. (Though, given the way they’re wiping laugh-induced tears from their eyes, he assumes it’s got to have something to do with sex. Humans only laugh like that when they’re thinking about sex.) 

 

 

* * *

Later that night, as they’re settling into bed, Kylo says to Rey, “Apparently, Threepio’s decided he wishes to be a Queenmaker.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“The New Alderaan treaty. I’d tossed in a paragraph about formally giving up Ben Organa-Solo as my name, and he just about had a conniption. Apparently, my mom very carefully timed signing my birthright away so that I still have a birthright claim on New Alderaan, and Threepio very much does not intend to see us lose that.”

“Because he wants to put… one of our children on that throne?”

“Apparently.”

“Is that why you were calling him a dildo?”

Kylo smirks at that. “I was thinking that earlier, but… I told him he could strike the paragraph where I gave up my name, but… If you don’t want our children to have that claim… I’m fully comfortable with calling him back in and putting that paragraph back in there."

She thinks about it. “I’m not sure I like the idea that some people are _born_ kings or queens.”

He nods along. “I understand that.” Unspoken, but she can feel it, is the fact that he agrees, too. “I also understand that’s part of the claim we’re making with ourselves, prettying us up so we’re not just the two people with the biggest navy.”

After all, it’s the Handsome _Prince_ and His Lady.

“I know. And if we make too much of a stink about it, that undermines the story the Kinears are trying to spin for us.”

“Yeah…”

“Why does this have to be so complicated?”

He stares at the ceiling. “I _really_ don’t know.”

 

 

* * *

After the start of first shift, and even more designs, several of which that make the booty shorts and midriff baring tube top look like a respectable uniform for one of the highest ranked diplomats of the Order, Em says, “Gentlemen, if you’ll allow me to be so bold,” looking at the collection of crumpled sketches and half thought out ideas. “This is stupid as fuck. You may be a person, but you’re going to look like an idiot in clothing designed for a human, because you aren’t one. On top of that, we stick clothing on ourselves mostly to keep us warm and protected, neither of which you need.”

“The Master told me…”

Jon’s mid-waving that away as he presses the call button on his comm and keys in Kylo’s code. A moment later they hear, “Jon?” Kylo’s voice sounds sleepy, and it’s occurring to Jon that maybe the Master isn’t burning the midnight oil.

But, if he’s got to burn it for this, then Kylo might as well, too. “Yeah. Okay, a uniform for Threepio, are you just pulling a shaft move and attempting to stamp a claim on him, or do you actually think it’s important to try and stuff a 1.7 meter tall pile of gold into an Order uniform?”

Em’s biting her hand, trying not to laugh, somewhat shocked at how Jon’s asking it, and Threepio’s about to have a mental breakdown at the idea of someone talking to Kylo like that.

They hear rustling, and the sound of someone, likely Kylo, shifting around. “He was annoying me. Bad idea?”

“Flamingly terrible. I can probably get some sort of badge of office and an Order Hex on him somewhere. Honestly, I’m thinking a nice, respectable arm band with the Order hex over his stripes. But he’ll look… just… stupid… in a uniform.”

“Yeah, fine. Great.” They can hear Kylo fiddling with something on his end of the comm. Rey’s voice, softly in the background, and then he says, “Do you think it matters that right now, no one going on this thing will be in uniform?”

“We will have an escort, Master,” Threepio says.

They hear a sigh. “Threepio is with you, Jon?”

“Seems obvious now, doesn’t it?” Jon’s smirking a bit.

“You’re an asshole.”

“So, I’ve been told. Anyway, they’ll be in an Order-branded ship, with Order-uniformed pilots, and Order-uniformed security, though none of them will be carrying weapons because that’s part of visiting New Alderaan. That said, we will have enough City Killers just outside of the range of their scanners to obliterate anyone who tries anything untoward.”

“Great," Kylo says, sounding mostly grumpy about being woken up. "General?”

“Master.”

“As the only one of us who’s been to New Alderaan, do you think it would be more impressive to go there wearing some sort of Order uniform, possibly an armband, or go there as you are, and as they remember you?”

That’s a good question, and it’s one reason why Threepio isn’t immediately jumping for a new body. “I think, sir, that going as I am is likely the better course. Most anyone of any real power there will at least recognize me, and many of them know me, as well.”

“Then do so. Likewise, you are allowed to tell me, to my face, if you think I’ve come up with a stupid plan, rather than following my orders to the letter, wasting the time of the people around you, and waiting for someone else to tell me it’s a stupid plan.”

“Noted, sir.”

They hear Rey’s voice again.

“Rey would like to make sure that the two of you are meeting tomorrow?” Rey’s voice. “Today.” Jon can feel Kylo glaring at him for waking him up in the middle of the night for this.

“With Lady Kinear, Mistress, to go over the particulars and set you up with the information you’ll need to study beforehand.”

They hear Kylo say, “You’ll have homework, fun.”

Again, Rey’s muffled voice in the background.

“Anything else?” Kylo asks.

“No, I think we’re set,” Jon replies.

“Great. Good night. And Jon, unplug, call it quits, and take a break. It’s late enough you shouldn’t be in the office, either.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“Yeah, see, I already know you’re lying to me.”

“Yep. You going to do anything about it?”

“That’s extremely unlikely. I could go ask Poe to check in on you.”

“Now who’s the asshole?”

Kylo laughs and comms off.

Threepio looks interested in that. It's starting to dawn on him what sort of interested in Poe Jon might be. “You asked me about Admiral Dameron before.”

“I did.” Jon looks nervous as he suddenly sees the trap that’s laying at his feet.

“Dameron, is that short, dark, and handsome’s last name?” Em asks.

Threepio chirps, “Admiral Poe Dameron, last commander of the Resistance. Second-in-command to Leia Organa. Hero of the battle of Starkiller Base. Black Leader. Formerly Commander Dameron of the Resistance, and previous to that Captain Dameron of the Navy of the New Republic.”

Em’s just looking at Jon, eyes boring into him.

Jon shrugs.

“Oh, do you fucking know how to pick ‘em. Really?”

He rolls his eyes a bit. “Yeah, well…“ He glares at Threepio.

“It would have come out eventually, Jon.”

“Only if…” Only if they kept at this long enough for it to come out… Which certainly seems to be where Poe wants it to go, and… when he’s not mentally freaking out at the idea, Jon does, too.

“Oh, it would have come out!” Em says. “I watch the way you moon around when he comes to visit. Your Dameron isn’t stupid. He’s figured out that this boy’s middle name is ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em,’ so he’s busy showing up to chat and have tea and play footsie under the table and then tease Jon into a puddle of goo and head off.”

It’s clear that if Threepio could blink, he would, but he can’t, so… “That’s likely more information than I needed on that subject.”

“Stuff it. You were looking to stir up trouble, that’s why you gave his former rank. While you’re at it, Threepio, wanna tell where you’re from?” Jon adds.

“Oh, honey, I know, remember? Film studies. Please, he’s in a third of the propaganda videos I did my dissertation on,” Em replies, smoothly. Having been born after the war, and well outside of any of the hot spots, most of this is… interesting… for her. It's something she could study. Not something she and anyone dear to her, lived.

Threepio cocks his head, and his voice makes it clear he’s confused by Em’s statement. “You studied… propaganda videos? And I’m in them? Wait… Do you mean the historic re-enactments?”

Em rolls her eyes. “Sure, you can call them that. _Propaganda._ That’s the correct word. Anyway, you’re in the background of a lot of the newsies footage, and in some of the re-created parts, too.”

For once, Threepio’s round, wide opened eyes are the right expression for the moment. “Propaganda!” he sounds horrified. “I’ll have you know that—”

“Stuff it, General,” Jon says. “Yes, I’m pulling rank on you. This is the wrong crowd to attempt to argue that all of your Rebels were pure as the light of the stars, and only in it for the good of the universe, and all the rest of that bantha shit. We’ve all seen the holos, and they absolutely are propaganda, designed to legitimize an illegal rebellion when a bunch of sore losers lost an election.”

Threepio’s livid. “That was _not_ what happened. That election. Palpatine put the crisis into motion. He was behind the attacks that he then asked for troops to defend against, and then over the intervening years, he murdered most anyone who looked like they’d do a decent job of getting enough support in the Senate to take him out.”

“That’s not in any of the histories,” Em says, sounding jaded. “And talk about missed opportunities for propaganda. That should have been in every history of the rise of the Empire, if it had ever really happened.”

“I was there, girlie. I watched him do it.” Which isn’t _exactly_ true. Padme was there. Anakin was there. He… meaning Artoo, overheard some conversations, and he’s putting that together with a few things he does know about what happened later, and…

Em’s supremely unimpressed. “And you didn’t bring it up on the floor of the senate before the vote. You’ve got recording capability, right? So, boo hoo. If you’ve got information like that, and you sit on it, you’re just as guilty as the guy who does the shit in the first place.” Em is not at all uncertain about that in the least. “If you knew, and you did nothing, then it’s as much on you as it is on him. So, you wanna try that story again? What did you _actually_ see and know?”

Threepio’s mentally cursing Bail. Artoo doesn’t have _proof._ He’s got a collection of overheard conversations and bits and pieces. And… He can see in Artoo’s memories, based on where he is in those memories, that he’s got to have more. He was _there._ But what he saw and heard is gone.

He does say, “After the vote. I knew it after the vote, not before. And by that point he had too much power.”

“Oh, please! It’s not in the propaganda films, or your historical recreations. It’s not in your official Declaration of Rebellion. Your side did years worth of films of the injustices of the Empire. Any planet that looked even close to friendly to you got holovids of starving people being marched into slave labor on the farm planets, inter-spliced with fat, rich, slovenly Imperials chowing down on the food they produced. I’ve seen hours of footage of neighborhoods being cleared by fire to ‘pacify the situation.’ I compared and contrasted the top three Rebel filmmakers and how they built the images of the Rebellion as the moral high ground, but nothing, in any of those videos, is about the election being rigged. If you knew this, why isn’t it in the footage? Your side figured starving people would win support but ‘the Emperor was the guy who actually set up the crisis that got you all to vote him the power to put the crisis down’ wouldn’t? I don’t know who fucked with your programming, General, but they did a number on you. If that happened, it would have been _all_ over everything. That kind of scandal doesn’t stay quiet, not if it’s real.” She’s fiddling with her pad, not really looking at it, but keeping her hands busy as she talks, “Hell, just one defector from Palpatine’s side could have made billions of credits by credibly showing proof of what happened. And you’re saying _none of them_ did it? Not one? Your Rebels couldn’t turn a single one of them? Please. Even the Hux method couldn’t beat people into perfect compliance, and Palpatine didn’t have anything like that.”

Threepio would be quivering with indignation if he could quiver. As it is, he’s very, very still.

Em can… feel… probably, that she’s metaphorically stepped on all of his toes, so she backtracks a bit. After all, the General does outrank her. “Look, I’m not saying you’re lying, but you’ve got those memories, you did nothing with them, and no one else did, and that stinks like the garbage planets of the Rrelling Rim. The only person who benefited by none of that getting out was Palpatine, so you’ve got to wonder why it didn’t get out.”

Threepio bites out, “I do wonder that, all the time.” Bail had… not proof, but two droids full of something very close to proof, and all the leads he needed to find proof. A… map to that one Imperial who could have been swayed with money and fame to break open the story. So, he blanked out the memory of one, and refused to use the other and…

According to Luke, no one is ever really gone, and right now he _really_ wants to talk to Bail, to know… why. Bleeding, thrumming, screaming WHY?

Instead of that, he says, “I think the idea of the armband is probably a good one. When I get to New Alderaan, they will recognize me, but some mark of rank may be useful.”

Em decides not to poke him further, and nods along. “Sure. A micromesh patch, we can use a mild adhesive on your arm, and that’ll keep the band in place.”

“That would be acceptable.”

 

 

* * *

3/25/2

 

“Lady Kinear,” Threepio says, as he comes up beside his… co-tutor… on all things diplomatic as they wait for the lift to take them from the F-Deck to Kylo’s private suite.

“General,” she says back to him as the doors open. She steps in first, inserts her ID chit, and he presses the button that grants them access to the AAA-Deck. She glances over to him. “I think, the thing I miss most about living on a planet, is weather. I can’t just say to you, ‘lovely day we’re having’ or ‘I hope the heatwave breaks soon.’”

Threepio’s never thought of that, though he does nod. “I have 78 million variations on the theme of that conversation in more languages than you can imagine in my databanks. It’s a very common way of starting up a friendly conversation. So, are you hoping to engage me in friendly conversation?”

“It occurs to me that… our time with Rey will likely go more smoothly if she’s not wondering if we’re about to start fighting.”

“We’re never about to start fighting, Lady. I just don’t trust you, nor do I think Rey should.”

“Why? I know you have our records in your databases. There’s nothing in there to make you unsettled.”

“You and your husband owe primary allegiance to clan Kinear, first, last, and always. Anything and everything else can go by the wayside in the furtherance of your family.”

“And that’s different from your devotion to clan Organa, how?”

“Among other things, I didn’t join Snoke, and I haven’t personally murdered anyone to keep my secrets safe.”

Ellie smirks a bit at him. “But would you? I’m sure you’ve got an override in there, that makes it so that not only won’t you kill anyone, but you’ll never even think of it. Try. Contemplate a murder, see what happens.”

“I do not—” And now she’s got him thinking of it… He wants to curse under his breath. He _can’t_ do it. He’s mentally incapable of even beginning to plan something like that.

“Exactly,” she smirks a bit at that, too. “It’s easy to take the moral high road when you literally cannot even fathom setting foot upon the low one. In the meantime, me and mine… We keep them safe, no matter what, and these days, Kylo and Rey are part of mine.”

“Until they decide to do something you don’t approve of.”

“Which should be a consolation to you, because if I don’t approve of it, you likely won’t, either. You are, after all, a creature looking to create a stable and functional governing body set to protect those who join it, correct? We want that, too, for our children, and grand children, and great grand children.”

“You want to rule it.”

Ellie shrugs a bit. “Not personally, and not this generation, and likely not the one after. In fifty to a hundred year, maybe. Besides, since when have you been against desiring to _rule_ something. You’ve worked with a Prince Consort, a Princess, a Senator, and the commanding General of a Resistance. For the last fifty years, you’ve been next to power, and for most of it appeared to have no qualms about it.”

Threepio’s quiet for a moment, as they continue downward. “Not just functional and stable, Lady Kinear. I think that is the biggest difference. It’s not enough that the borders are safe from raiders and the currency sound. There has to be more than that.”

“Kylo is offering more.”

“I know. I do not trust that a Kinear dynasty would, though. Not for anyone not named Kinear.”

Ellie smiles at him, but her eyes are sharp. “How little you know, General. How little you know. But, I will point this out, it’s only in a place where the border are stable, where goods and currency can flow without or with only minimal fear of raiders, where homes can be left during the day, their owners sure that when they come back, they’ll still be standing, that you can begin to move onto bigger and better things.

“And, whether you agree or not with the side we backed, the Empire was all about getting that groundwork into place so they could move to bigger and better things. And yes, in your beloved Alderaan, which had been that kind of place for centuries, the work necessary to pacify those who would steal, rape, kill and destroy seemed barbaric, but in places where the locals could finally leave their homes and be sure they were still there when they got back—”

“You and yours burned a lot of homes of people who had nothing to do with the problems in your enthusiasm for ‘pacification.’ The Emperor wanted nothing more than power for himself and trampled anyone who got in the way, looked like they might get in the way, or were located near someone who might get in the way.”

“The Emperor was not immortal, General, and we had _plans_ for what came after.”

“Which is exactly why I’m wary of Clan Kinear. Kylo and Rey are not immortal either, though apparently you and the Grand Marshall appear to be. Who knows where your plans will go once they’re no longer in the game?”

Ellie laughs at that. “Fear not, General, we’ve got maybe a decade left, probably less.”

Threepio is silent for a moment, checking his rosters. “You have twenty-two descendants in the Order now, or Order adjacent spaces.”

“All the more reason to trust me, then. I’m _motivated_ to make sure the Order thrives and survives.” The lift slows its downward trajectory. “And we’re just about here,” Ellie says.

“Indeed.”

 

* * *

Rey’s in a better mood about… well, everything, by the time the meeting is getting ready. She’s still not relishing moving, but the kids are enthusiastic about trying somewhere new (or maybe just not having to dig out from the snow _again)_ and that helps. (Granted, she’s also not fond of having to dig out, and this morning, with a fresh twenty centimeters on the ground, and temperatures so cold those twenty centimeters were sheer powder, meaning they just slipped right back onto the ground after being lifted up, resettling somewhere warm is tickling her fancy, too.)

She’s in the not remotely a throne room right now. Right now, it’s mostly just empty, though she understands there are plans to put some plants in there, and some sort of path, maybe a reflecting pool and fountain.

She’d been thinking of meeting in either Kylo’s office, or their room, but he’s in the office with the men he calls ‘the numbers wonks’ so she’s out here, not disturbing them. (Or as Kylo put it, ‘I have a hard enough time following the numbers when I don’t have my favorite person sitting next to me chatting in my head. There’s no chance at all of me following along if you’re there to help me amuse myself.’ That seemed relevant to Rey, so she’s in the not-a-throne-room.)

She’s a bit surprised to see Ellie and Threepio come down together. And they look a bit surprised to see her out here. They don’t say anything though, and join her, overlooking the galaxy spinning around beyond them.

“Do you know where New Alderaan is?” Rey asks Threepio.

He looks out for a moment, running the images in his head against what’s in front of his face. “We’re not correctly situated to point New Alderaan out. It’s behind us. Alderaan, though,” he gestures to a bit of space that looks like every other bit of space. “Thirty-seven years ago, it would have been there.”

Rey nods. “Okay. So… I go with the non-aggression treaty, where we formally declare that we’ve got no interest in doing anything remotely harmful to New Alderaan. Buried in that treaty are the seeds of you,” she’s talking to Threepio, “formally setting up a potential Queen Ren of Alderaan one of these days.”

Ellie doesn’t look satisfied or smirk. She doesn’t let her pleasure at that get to her face. There or not, Threepio does not, for an instant miss how she reacts to that news. Nor does Rey.

“Am I correct in assuming that Queen Ren to be your daughter, and not you,” Ellie says.

Rey nods. “All I’ve got to do is show up, look pretty, hand this thing over, and not embarrass myself or Kylo.”

Ellie does smile at that. “In a nutshell. Though, like anything else shoved into a nutshell, you’ve only got the high points. The details are where this will get interesting. First of all, while it’s true that you’re going to hand this thing over, the way you do that is about making a warm, encompassing, welcoming entreaty. By the time we’re done with this, we want New Alderaan to feel like we’re… well, a long-lost child, coming home, and offering a new home to distant relatives.”

Threepio sighs at that. Being wary of Lady Kinear would be so much easier, and more satisfying, if she weren't so damn good at the job. He says, “She’s not wrong. Part of what I’ve added to the treaty is formal recognition of our two sovereignties, an exchange of embassies, and the ability for full joint citizenship.”

Ellie glances up at Threepio, and again looks very pleased. “You’ve planned this well, haven’t you?”

“I certainly hope so.”

Rey looks between them, getting a sense of what they want, and aren’t saying. “I’m… Oh… Kylo is the heir of New Alderaan, but not their king. He doesn’t want to be their King either. But if an Alderaanian wants him to be their King, they come to us.”

“Exactly,” Ellie says. “But in five years, they don’t have to abandon their Alderaanian citizenship when they become Order Citizens. Likewise, and this’ll be interesting, if anyone who has already chosen Kylo decides that New Alderaan looks like a nice place to settle, New Alderaan, assuming they go along with this, won’t force them to drop Order citizenship, or ban them outright from Alderaanian citizenship, or settling there.”

“You’re… tying the two societies together,” Rey says.

Threepio nods.

“Will they go along with it?” Rey asks.

“That’s the question, now, isn’t it?” Ellie responds, looking at Threepio.

He’d shrug if he could. “I put the odds of them taking us up on this at two in five.” Rey blinks, she’s never heard Threepio come up with odds that aren’t astronomical. “The question is, how closely do they want to be tied to the First Order,” she’s about to say the First Order is dead, but stops herself, and decides to _listen_ to what Threepio is saying. “How much do they trust that the First Order really is dead, how confident is Queen Heloise in her throne, how well can she imagine the angles and options that come with aligning with the Order, and, of course, just sheer perverse human cussedness. The current terms are, of course, favorable to everyone. There’s no downside on this, as it stands, on it’s face, for either of us, now.”

“That’s a lot of qualifiers for one sentence, General,” Ellie says.

“The situation warrants them. How this treaty may color and shade the future though, that’s where the insecurities lie.”

He just watches Rey, and she can feel she’s supposed to glean something from what he’s said. Ellie’s waiting too, letting her suss it out.

“There are no agreements that are favorable to everyone?” Rey says after a moment.

Threepio would smile if he could, and Ellie nods. “The current agreement… Have you read it?”

Rey shakes her head. “No.”

“Well, that’s going to be the first homework assignment, then. But, unless The General changed it well beyond the last version I saw, this treaty shifts the status quo in ways so that Queen Ren does become a potential. In that Queen Ren is not only not yet born, but might never be, there is only potential here. That said, Queen Ren is destabilizing because she provides options that are not currently on the board.”

Rey looks between them. “But that’s why they came to visit us in the first place, right? Prince Ben came back into play, and that’s making them nervous.”

“Exactly, Lady Ren.”

Rey wrinkles her nose at Threepio. “I really don’t like you calling me that. I know, formal, whatnot, but…”

Threepio would side eye Ellie if he could, but again, he can’t, so he just stands there for a moment, _We are not in private_ radiating off of him strongly.

Rey grits her teeth.

“Fine, _Rey._ Because of the genocide of Alderaan, and how the monarch is chosen, people with the correct lineage are _limited._ Fifty years ago, there were twelve families the monarch could come from, and at any given time, at least a hundred people who could put forth a claim. As of this time last year, there were only two surviving lines that monarchs could be chosen from, and four people who could make the claim. Adding a third, even if said third is strenuously claiming he’s got no interest in being King of Alderaan, makes the other two nervous.”

“This treaty doesn’t exactly calm their nerves,” Ellie says, “but it does offer a superficial balm, and makes sure that for at least the next twenty years the status quo remains the same. Likewise, depending on local temperament, they should recognize that having a good relationship with the Order can come in handy on myriad levels.”

“Among other things, New Alderaan is somewhat less secure in the trappings of peace than Alderaan was,” Threepio says. “Its official positions are pacifistic, but given how badly ‘we have no weapons’ hurt them last time, it’s likely they may not shun the companionship of an extremely well-armed friend who has… reasons… to be defensive of her.”

“What happened with them during the Resistance years? Did Snoke have any interest…” Rey begins to ask.

Ellie shakes her head. “Too tiny to matter. New Alderaan has… ten million people? Twelve? If it were anything other than New Alderaan, no one would pay it any heed.”

Rey spends a moment thinking about ‘well-armed-friend.’ “Is an alliance with someone who is explicitly non-pacifistic part of what may be making them nervous.”

Ellie smiles, and she has the sense of pleasure off of Threepio. “That’s where two in five comes in,” he says. “A formal alliance with any combatant would involve a serious shift in their current attitudes. The question is, do they trust that Kylo has no interest in New Alderaan? If they think that he’ll abide by what he’s said, they may not take us up on this offer. They’ll settle back, and rest assured that he’ll be here, doing what he does, and it won’t touch them.”

“But that sort of thing didn’t work out well for them in the past,” Rey says.

“Exactly,” Ellie replies. “So, do they choose to get into bed with us, hoping to control the outcome. Do they look at our treaty, and re-write it substantially, and hope that eventually, we’ll work out a deal more to their liking?”

“And will that deal involve him formally dropping his claim, and the claim of any children we may have?” Rey asks.

“Probably,” Threepio replies, “but that will be a sticking point for us. We’re not going to budge on that.”

“Even if it’s a deal breaker?” Rey asks.

“Rey, they are maybe twelve million, mostly unarmed, people on the far side of the galaxy of us. There is literally no upshot for us by dropping Kylo’s claim.”

“I believe what the General is trying to say, dear, is that while we can enforce any treaty agreement we come up with, or break it, they cannot. And they know it. They don’t have the manpower, let alone the firepower, to do anything to us, so to a degree this is bargaining with nothing but charm and the affections of the party in power in your hand.”

“This is about image, Rey. The Talmasch and the Antillies, the two remaining royal families, do not want the Organa line resuscitated. They also don’t want to look like they snuffed it out in the first place. Which is why they are not seeking to ban Organa from the line.”

“Can they do that?” Rey asks.

“Any population that’s motivated can remove a ruler, or potential ruler,” Ellie replies. “That’s how they got rid of the Emperor.”

“But, _image_ matters,” Threepio says. “If Alderaan is to be _Alderaan_ they cannot do certain things. Which means they have limited tools at their disposal. The best option for them is to discredit Kylo as an Organa. That way they never have to even touch any of the deeper issues.”

“And we’re going to just gloss over the whole Organa thing, and act as if it’s so blatantly obvious that it cannot be challenged,” Rey says.

Ellie grins at her. “You’ve got it. But they’ll want the challenge.”

“And that’s where you come in,” Rey looks to Threepio. “I know we can’t do a DNA claim because Kylo’s mother was adopted. I know we don’t want to do a DNA claim because that’ll… complicate… the situation. But you can… You can prove he’s Ben Solo, right?”

“I can prove he’s Ben Solo. Retina scans, facial recognition, I have family images in my memory banks, and R2 does, too. Between the two of us we can provide images of Ben growing up until the age of twenty-two.”

“But we’re not doing that because…” Rey says.

“Because it’s not unfakable,” Ellie says. “Because it’s possible that there was a Ben Solo, but there isn’t any longer. Because retina scans can be sliced. Because the Empire ran the register, and then for a while there was no register, and then the Senate had it, and then the First Order, and as the man who runs the Order, Kylo would have the access to shift the scan to match him, retroactively.”

“But no one wants to make that claim, either,” Threepio adds. “The galaxy works better if we believe the register is inviolate.”

“This might be stupid, but… What are the odds that there’s a man who just happens to look like Ben Solo, exactly, down to the retina pattern, _and_ is Force sensitive? I know… surgery is a thing. I guess you could build a face to match Ben, but… You can’t fake Force sensitivity, right?” Rey says.

“And that’s likely why they won’t attempt to challenge us on who Kylo Ren used to be,” Ellie replies. “They don’t like it, but everyone knows who Luke Skywalker was, and while images can be recreated, Kylo’s skills can’t be faked, so…”

“Knows Luke, but not Leia? She was Force sensitive, too,” Rey says, and then sees the way Ellie responds to that. “Oh.”

Threepio nods. “Most of the galaxy did not know that.”

“Interesting,” Ellie responds. 

None of them seem to have anything to say after that, so Ellie turns to Threepio, “Do you know the current queen?”

“No. I knew her predecessor, of course. But Queen Heloise was still a child when I was last on New Alderaan. We have met, but I do not _know_ her, on any functional level.”

“And her predecessor…” Rey pauses, “was her mother? So…”

“Could be very similar, could be as close as Kylo and Leia,” Ellie says, all but daring Threepio to expand on the idea of Kylo and Leia and how similar they may be.

He doesn’t take the bait. If Rey had asked that question of him, privately, he might have been tempted to respond, but he’s not about to give Ellie Kinear that information. He does begin briefing them on the Talmash family. He wraps with, “And here is the other homework assignment,” he hands Rey a datastick. “History of Alderaan and New Alderaan. This should round out that last few minutes, and make it make more sense.”

“So, reading? That’s what I’m doing to get ready for this?” Rey says.

“For now. We’ll get you properly kitted out closer to time, and when we have the schedule of events, we’ll walk through them, but for now, read,” Ellie replies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the kiddos went back to school! Thanks to all of you for the kind words. I'm doing a bit better over here, got some work done, and am feeling the batteries starting to re-charge. 
> 
> So, of course, Mr. Raist and I both got colds. Sigh...
> 
> Sometimes it just works out that way. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter, the next one, and the one after are all roughed out and ready for a final read-through. So, that's good. 
> 
> And here's hoping for better, for all of us, soon. :)
> 
> Happy Saturday!


	41. New Alderaan: Homework

3/26/2

 

Kylo comes home to Rey sitting on the comfy chair, data pad in hand, a dark, black, almost visible cloud hanging over her head.

He sits next to her and raises an eyebrow. “Problems?”

She _glares_ at him.

“Big problems?”

“Threepio and Ellie have me reading Alderaan history.”

Kylo nods. His first feeling is a sort of rush of interest. His fingers almost twitch at the idea of grabbing the pad and doing some reading. “Okay. Can I…” Her eyes narrow a little. “Or not.” He makes a mental note to look it up later.

“Alderaan history was written by sadists.”

“Uh…” That’s got him flatfooted.

“If this were technical specs, I’d read it once, and know it. If this was theology or philosophy, I’d have to walk around so I don’t fall asleep, but I’d get it. But no, this is history, of a culture where the details are interesting, but everyone has one of six names. Do you have any idea how many Organas, Antillies, Corandas, and Durragas, there are in this thing? And they’ve all got one of the same six first names, too. There are seven Bail Organas in the last three hundred years. Your grandfather is, I think, Bail the Eighth.”

Kylo winces. That would have killed him as a student.

“But they don’t use numbers. You’re supposed to know which Bail it is based on context. Oh, and there are two Bail Antillies and three Bail Corandas, and…”

“Context…” he says slowly. Lips against her head.

 

 

“I don’t have because I’m reading this bloody thing for the first time.”

“Ah…”

She’s still frustrated with the work, and says, “You didn’t miss out on anything by not learning this. It’s… Shit… Okay, I’m sorry.” She can see that comment hit him wrong. “It’s just hard, and I know I’m going to mess it up, talk about the wrong Organa at the wrong time and…” 

He rubs her back. “I spent today looking at trade contracts. Millions of credits slipping from account one to account two for parts and bits and whatnot, and…”

“Wanna swap?”

“Do you?” He’s genuinely interested in that. Among other things, Rey likely actually knows what sorts of things he bought today, and why those specs mattered. And maybe he could just… write up the highlights on Alderaan history for her. Which Bail is which or something. He was a competent note taker back in the day.

She sighs. “I probably need to know this stuff.” Then she kisses him. “You probably need to know what you bought for the Order.” He makes a face at that. “I did learn _why_ Alderaan is peaceful.”

“Big horrible war and lots of people died?” he says, gathering her close as she turns to face him.

“Shockingly enough, yes. Here’s the fun part. The two main contestants for said war were King Bail Antillies—”

Kylo rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, this is only going to get better from here. So, Bail Antillies on one side, and King Renald Corada on the other.”

“All right. Not too bad, yet.”

“Nope. But Bail Antillies gets captured by Bail Organa, not your grandfather, who was the lead general in Renald Corada’s service.”

He sighs.

“So, Antillies’ Queen, Breha Antillies, rallies the troops to go get him back. They fail, but manage to capture Renald. So, Renald’s Queen, Breha Corada, takes the field against Breha Antillies. Her top general, also Bail—”

It’s not that he thought she was exaggerating; he just didn’t expect it to pile on like that. “Okay, stop, you’re killing me, here!”

“It’s just going to get better, there are three more Bails, and another Breha, and two Leias, and…”

He groans.

“And that’s just the one war. Oh, and they’re all fucking cousins.”

“Of course. So, who wins?”

“No one. They fight for two hundred years, manage to kill off every direct descendant of both families, and then the crown goes to the Rollandsons, who, in an effort to soothe the allies of Antillies and Corada families name their oldest daughters as new starts to the two families, and then they destroy every weapon on the planet bigger than a hand blaster, stick both sides on different continents, and let a few hundred years go by where they only interact with each other to trade.

“By the time that was done, the Rollandsons were no more, the Antillies and Coradas were back up in numbers, and the Organas were the family in charge of keeping trade flowing.

“By the time they had the ability to travel fast and easy between continents they’d been trading so long, and getting rich off of each other so well, the peace looked like it was going to hold, so they started intermarrying again, and…”

“And peaceful, prosperous Alderaan began?” Kylo says.

“I think so. I’m just getting to the point where they’ve got faster than sound travel, which is making the planet small enough that anyone can go anywhere in a matter of hours. They haven’t figured out how to get off world at that point, yet.”

“So… no recent history?”

“Not yet. I’ve got two weeks to learn this stuff, though.”

 

 

* * *

3/28/2

 

It amuses the kids to no end when Rey has ‘homework.’

Granted, most of the time, she’s reading up on different Force theories and ideals of balance, and philosophy and whatnot.

But, they know she’s studying for this eventual visit to New Alderaan, and they did get Threepio to come back for a few hours to give them a brief history of Alderaan and why it’s so important. And the few hours they spent talking about the Empire blowing up Alderaan, and the changes that came after, how that galvanized the Rebellion, and shifted it from a few people nibbling at the edges of the Empire into a full-fledged political reality, capable of manning a truly functional army and then taking out the Empire for good.

Right now, it’s quiet study time. All of them have their different books, and are sitting (or in the case of Rey, Critt, and Opal, pacing around) while they read.

She’s finally getting to the ‘recent history’ portion of New Alderaan. The parts that Threepio told her needed to be paid attention to.

So, reading, paying attention, re-reading… Thinking, re-reading again.

Threepio gave her this history. It’s (she double checks) from a New Alderaan civics text book. Children on New Alderaan read this as part of their secondary education. (She half wonders if the small blocks of text interspersed with lots of pictures is Threepio trying to keep her interested in the subject, or if he’s trying to give her a ‘native’ point of view.)

And it’s not what she’s expecting.

There’s a whole chapter on Leia Organa, heroine of the Rebellion. It’s a breathless, fawning, packed with exciting details and death-defying capers and… Well, if Han Solo or Luke Skywalker were part of what was going on, it was only incidentally, and mostly they were in the background. (Wedge Antillies, on the other hand, has four pages of his piloting exploits.)

She hadn’t known that Leia joined the Rebellion in her teens, or that she was nineteen when Alderaan was destroyed. And the things in her chapter of daring-do during the Rebellion, a lot of it is new to her, but it’s the sort of thing she’d expect.

It’s the end of the chapter that’s a surprise. In this version of the story Leia, knowing that she’d be more valuable to the galaxy working on the New Republic level, bows out of local Alderaanian politics. She gives up her birthright, and devotes her life to building a galaxy-wide governing body, and when the First Order rises, and the powers that be in the Senate refused to fight it, she re-took the mantle of Rebel, and started the Resistance.

Then follows several glowing pages about the daughter of Alderaan, the Heroine of the Rebellion going forth to fight the First Order. It ends… on a less glowing note. The author of the book doesn’t know what happened to Leia, just that she vanished shortly after the fall of the First Order. The book certainly indicates that she, personally, took out the First Order, but it doesn’t explicitly say that.

There’s no hint that anyone besides Leia had anything, at all, to do with her ceasing to be “Princess Leia.”

There are only a handful of mentions of Han, and he’s referred to as her partner or consort.

There are no mentions of Ben. You couldn't find out that Leia ever had a son by reading this history. There's no mention of Vader, at least, in the sense of being her birth father. There’s no mention of her being adopted.

She checks the date. It was written a few months ago, after Kylo publicly stated his birth name. 

In these pages, Leia's family is Bail and Breha, and they cease to exist when she was nineteen. Her life was devoted to allowing people the power to chose their own paths, and the spread of Alderaanian-style self-governance and non-aggression.

She was the eternal glowing light. She was the human symbol of fighting oppression against all odds, and winning.

The last page is two pictures of Leia. The first is with her parents. She’s young, seventeen, eighteen? Can’t be past nineteen. It’s probably taken just about the time she learned of her parent’s involvement with the Rebellion, and joined them in it. All three of them are beaming at the camera. It’s clear that she’s at the point in time where life is exciting and filled with endless possibilities. The second is one where she’s by herself. It’s the Leia that Rey knew. Older, softer, hair brown and gray and wrapped in a utilitarian braid around her head. She’s by herself in this one, and the smile is a little jaded and wry.

Rey re-reads that chapter again.

And it’s not that it’s _wrong,_ but it just isn’t _right_ either.

 

 

* * *

3/29/2

 

It’s a day later when she’s got some time to talk more with Threepio.

“I got to the end of the book you gave me.”

He nods slightly. “I take it you found it informative.”

“I… did. Is this… Do…” He waits patiently for her to figure out how to ask that question. “Do they really believe that… about what happened with Leia?”

He’d smile, a sly annoyed one, if he could. “The ones raised on those textbooks do. It’s possible that Queen Heloise might believe that version of the story as well.”

Rey blinks. “But… that treaty, the one where she signed her and Kylo’s—”

“Just hers. She no longer had the rights to Ben’s.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “The treaty that supposedly strikes her and Kylo from the succession. That’s a… real thing… that exists, right? People could read it.”

“They certainly could. I have a copy of it in my database. It’s probably on display in the national museum somewhere. It’s written to look like Leia had decided that she couldn’t devote the time or attention to New Alderaan that it needed, so she formally removed herself and her son from the succession, allowing for Ania, the mother of Queen Heloise to take over. Three years ago, Ania died, and her oldest daughter took, and passed, the Day of Demand Trials, and became the current Queen of New Alderaan.”

“And…” she takes a deep breath, “just to make sure, it… didn’t happen that way?”

Threepio feels a surge of anger, and hits Rey with it. “It did _not._ ”

“Ah… But… If she wasn’t on New Alderaan and…”

“The monarch of New Alderaan is a mostly ceremonial position. Unlike Kylo, who spends most of his working hours most days on the business of the Order, it does not require that much time or attention. At least, it doesn’t have to. There is a tricameral house of representatives, seven primary political parties, and a judicial branch. If somehow, there’s ever a deadlock between all of those branches, the Monarch is the tie breaker. Though, traditionally, in cases of a deadlock, the Monarch will offer up a compromise position to vote on. As of this point, there’s never been a compromise that didn’t get the approval, but if somehow it didn’t, then what the Queen says will rule. But, other than exceedingly rare situations, that happen, on average, once a century, it’s a primarily diplomatic position, both in planetary politics, and galactic politics.

“Given what Leia was doing with the New Republic, she could have done most of what she needed to do as Queen Leia, too. And, given how, especially in the early days, most of what was happening with New Alderaan was building and maintaining the image of being undefeated and alive, Leia was doing everything and more than what she needed to do in the New Republic.”

“Reminding the galaxy they were still a going concern,” Rey says.

“Exactly. The first thing she did as Princess Leia, for Alderaan, after the Concordance, was get them a new home world. That was the sort of thing that took more time and attention than was easy to manage as a founding member of the New Republic, though, since it involved producing a senate resolution, and networking enough goodwill for the idea to get it passed, her dual position as Senator Organa-Solo and Princess Leia were helpful, but once that was accomplished, being Princess or Queen wouldn’t have been untenable.”

Rey thinks for a moment. “So, the current queen… Who I’m meeting, believes the nice story?”

Threepio thinks about that. “I don’t know that for a fact. Her mother, Queen Ania Antillies, obviously, knew the real story. She was one of the architects of the fall of the house of Organna. Several of Queen Heloise’s advisers were there at the time, and know the real story. Whomever sent Lord Organa to poke around to get samples from Kylo _absolutely_ knew the real story. I’d think, since they know we’re coming, and since Organa met with me, they know that at least someone here knows the real version, that the odds of Queen Heloise knowing the real story _now,_ if she didn’t know then, are better than even.”

“Okay, so… They don’t want Kylo popping up and mucking up their succession lines, and possibly more than that, they don’t want the carefully constructed, everyone happily played nice and got together to find a conducive end to things story line damaged.”

“Like I said the last time we talked, _image_ matters. And that’s also why we’ll get a warm… at least on the surface, greeting. Old friends gathering together to… reminisce, or something in that sphere.”

“Ah… So?”

“So, we are leaving on the 10th for New Alderaan.” Threepio hands over another datapad. “And this is _my_ version of what happened. And, unlike the one you just read, this is the unfiltered, uncensored, and, more importantly, _real_ version of what happened.”

Rey takes it, thinking, and then says, “And it’s how the… people who make the decisions about what happens with the treaty… Because the Queen is a figurehead, it’s the people in the senate and judicial branch that actually make the decisions, right?” Threepio nods. “That’s how some… most… of them understand it?”

“Certainly some, and the some that are likely higher up in the eschalons of power. Possibly most, though I’m less sure of that. It has been more than ten years since I was at New Alderaan.”

“Not after Leia signed her name away?”

“Actually, no. We went several times after, there were still friendships and appearances to be kept up, but once the war began to get hot, the last place Leia wanted to draw attention to was New Alderaan.”

That makes a lot of sense to Rey.

“Kylo’s never been there.”

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“And… he’s not in the history book.” Rey can feel that Threepio would sigh silently, just the intake of exasperated breath, and the exhale, if he could.

“Rey, it is a recent history book, one designed to make everything about Alderaan and New Alderaan look good. The idea that Ben Solo, who eventually became _Kylo Ren_ , right hand of Snoke, would be in there… No. I believe earlier versions may have mentioned that Leia had a son, but since he’s been using his birth name, he’s no longer in those history books. It wouldn’t do to have the son of an Alderaanian hero be the Supreme Leader of a group that exterminated and entire system.”

“Threepio…”

“I know he was not in charge when it happened, but, you must understand the _look_ of these things.”

The _look_ then. “And yet, you want to put our daughter on that throne.”

Threepio doesn’t exactly shrug. “I think that’s a possible outcome with a high likelihood of happening which would benefit everyone involved.”

“What’s the likelihood of it happening if you do nothing?”

“Significantly slimmer.”

“So, we’re… clean enough to produce an eventual Queen, but not to rule on our own.”

“I didn’t think either of you wanted to rule New Alderaan.”

“Neither of us do, I’m trying to understand how it _looks._ ”

Threepio would blink, but he can’t, so… “Fine. I understand you do not intend to continue ruling the Order for more than another eleven years.”

“That’s the plan.”

“If, at the end of that time, you were to retire to New Alderaan, or possibly Naboo, and quietly, and then not so quietly, get involved in worthy political situations and organizations, in likely another ten years, you and Kylo could make a decent play for the monarchy of either of those planets, should an opening arise. It’s, assuming the Order stays on the course it’s on now, a possible play, and likely not too many people would fuss. Leia is and was popular enough on New Alderaan… well, you can see how her history is recorded. And Padme Amidala is still beloved on Naboo.   

“It would look better if it were your child, because both cultures value youth and the supposed clarity of thought and innocence that comes with youth, but Kylo could make a blood claim for either throne, and if he had a daughter, put her in the running for Naboo, or make a play for her, or himself, for Alderaan.

“People will, continually, bring up the First Order, and likely Vader, and much of Kylo’s past. If he were willing to do what his mother was not, rip the fragile alliance apart, and really fight for it, he could take, for himself, the throne of New Alderaan.

“In the case of a potential child, especially one who was mostly raised on the planet in question, an eventual succession is cleaner, less likely to cause strife, and should the right alliances and marriages be made, some, but significantly less fussing than Kylo would inspire, would occur. Does that give you a good idea of the _look_ of things?”

“I think so. And for what we’re doing now?”

“We go, we visit, we socialize. There will likely be a gathering of people who knew Leia well. They’ll tell pleasant stories of her. They will also likely ask vague questions as to what she’s doing now, because, as you likely know, Leia Organa just,” and his voice catches on this, “vanished one day. Some of them may have met Ben when he was a little boy. They may also have a few pleasant stories of him as a baby or toddler.”

“But not as a child.”

“No.” Threepio doesn’t say that after the age of three Ben didn’t get taken out in public much. He doesn’t have to.

“Han?”

“Unlikely. Though it wasn’t widely publicized, people who were watching noticed that he and Leia ceases intimate relations about fifteen years ago. They absolutely noticed that she only went by Leia Organa-Solo for three years.”

“Ah.” Rey’s almost tempted to ask about that, but decides that maybe she doesn’t need that close of a view of Han and Leia’s marriage.

“I’m sure they’ll show you the capitol gardens and the Alderaan Memorial. There will probably be tea. There will definitely be supper. It will be vegetarian, and will show off the wide selection of fruits and wines available on the planet.”

“Great.” She sounds slightly put out. Threepio looks, as best he can, curious. “I don’t… I get drunk really easily, and that’s bad for something like this, right?”

“It is. You only have to have a sip of each, and there are medications that can prevent your body from metabolizing alcohol if you want to go in that direction.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I understand that they generally don’t recommend it unless you’re going to a culture where the ability to drink everyone else under the table is a status symbol. The side effects can be unpleasant.”

“What kind of unpleasant?”

“Hot flashes, uncontrollable sweating, tremors in the hands and feet, blurred vision, and drooling. Leia only used it when it was completely unavoidable.”

Rey recoils at that. “It sounds a lot like being drunk.”

“It is, but your head stays clear, so you get to remember it, and you’ll stay upright and won’t get alcohol poisoning, no matter how much you imbibe. I understand the hangover is just as bad as it would be otherwise, though.”

“You’re right; I’m not interested in doing that.”

“Indeed, just a sip or two, and intersperse them with food and whatever else there is to drink. Likewise, since New Alderaan has an ideal climate for tea plantations, asking for tea will likely be perfectly acceptable. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Rey offers a slight smile. “Just kick me under the table if I’m going wrong, okay?”

Threepio sounds startled as he says, “I couldn’t possibly—"

She holds up a hand to stop him there. If Threepio won’t, Ellie will. “What else happens?”

“I’m not sure. We don’t have the finalized itinerary, yet. We’ll get that closer to time.”

“Okay.”

Threepio puts his hand on the datapad. “Read, Rey, and then think about the difference between what’s in here, and what’s in the text book. The text book is how New Alderaan wants to be seen. This is what it is. It’s the job of a good diplomat to make sure they always know both of those things, and balance between them, keeping the host country convinced that you see the textbook version, while understanding what’s going on under the textbook version.”

“Do I ever let it slip that I know the real version?”

“Sometimes, to the right people, in the right situation. I would not be shocked if we’ll have a private meeting with someone who is not the Queen, but is one of her high up advisers, and that’ll be a person who will hope we only know the textbook version, but will, the moment they see me, understand that you know the real version inside and out, and possibly better than they do.”

“Will that… cause trouble?”

“Only for them.”

“And that private meeting, is that where we’ll really talk about the treaty?”

“No. It’s probable we won’t actually talk about the treaty. After all, they won’t have had the time to really read it. That’s the meeting where they’ll try to figure out if Ben is going to make a play for New Alderaan. That’s the meeting where they’ll see if the House of Organa is going to rise again. The treaty is… not unimportant, but it’s a layer of shiny veneer over the real reason for going. They want to make sure Ben is not going to try and take over, and you’re going to make sure they know that while his current plans are not aimed in that direction, if he were to ever decide it would be to his advantage to control New Alderaan he could do so without having to fire a single gun.”

“And then…” she’s thinking, “they’ll get nervous?”

“Maybe. As best I can tell, they _should._ But, it’s possible that whomever we may speak to may be interested in the House of Organa rising again. When Samath Organa came to call, I had Artoo do a bit of snooping, and not everyone loves the House of Talmash or the House of Antillies. Or, at least, not their current members. So, it’s possible that plans within plans may be attempting to resurrect the House of Organa through this move.

“However it is, you’ll suggest that in addition to non-aggression, that perhaps open immigration between the two populations, and a recruiting station or two, and maybe, if they’re feeling… amenable, full free trade recognition would be in order. It won’t get hashed out, and you won’t demand it, you’ll just… theorize, or possibly Ellie or I will, in their direction.

“One, and possibly more, of the three of us will paint an image of our two societies happily flowing along together, in a very peaceful, prosperous Alderaanian sort of way.”

Rey thinks she’s getting it. “We’ll do that as a way of suggesting that’s the sort of thing that makes sure Kylo Ren doesn’t suddenly decide he wants to be King of New Alderaan, in addition to Master of the Order. But it’s not in the treaty, and won’t be… until a later draft?”

Threepio nods. “That is part of the idea, Rey. The other part is, it genuinely is to the benefit of New Alderaan to have extremely powerful friends who are armed to the teeth and desire their long and fruitful survival. Alderaan was able to be _Alderaan_ because by the time anyone outside of their system could muster a threat, they were beloved of much of the galaxy, and founding members of the Senate.”

Rey’s feeling… she’s not sure. It’s like being in the cave seeing a billion versions of herself stretching onto infinity. There are so many ways this could go, so many possible ramifications, and deals that may last hundreds of years, and…

Threepio lays his hand on hers. “You will do this, and you’ll do it splendidly. You handled the K’Arans with grace and poise, and you will do this just as well. I’m not sure I believe in destiny, Rey, but if such a thing does exist, I think this might be yours.”

She smiles a little at that. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He glances to the chrono. “And if I’m correct, it’s getting onto when you’re in charge of supper?”

“You are. I need to get moving.”

“Come see me when you finish the real version.”

“I will.”

 

* * *

Rey’s not paying too much attention to supper. She’s reading. And while she does so, Jacen sidles over, bopping her hip with his. “Something’s got you interested.”

She looks up and offers a quick, tight smile to him. “Something.”

“Gonna tell us?”

“Do I need to?”

“I’m behaving. Your thoughts are in your own head right now.”

“Remember yesterday, Threepio came by to talk about Alderaan and New Alderaan?”

He nods.

“More homework. I’m learning about Kylo’s mom, and how she ended up not being Queen of Alderaan.”

“Oh. You look like it’s interesting.”

“I think so…” She looks back at the pad. “And maybe not just for my visit there week after next.”

Jacen raises an eyebrow.

She shakes her head. “Still rough ideas. I’ll share when I’ve got them more smoothed out.”

He nods, and heads back to his rice, making sure to turn the heat down before it boils over.

 

 

* * *

It started, at least according to Threepio, easily. Senator Organa of the New Republic didn’t get back to New Alderaan very often. As often as her father ever did, but her mother had lived, full-time, on Alderaan, and that’s, generally speaking, where people prefer their monarchs.

At home.

Being… Queenly.

And, well, she was sharp, and sarcastic, and she didn’t have the picture book marriage or child.

There were whispers about finding someone who would… look better… someone who could… ‘devote’ their full time to the needs of New Alderaan _on_ New Alderaan.

(After all, while it was true that setting up the Galactic Republic, and the Senate, and figuring out it’s charter, and the thrust of the government and how centrist it should be, and who could be members and… All took quiet a bit of time. And were, _of course,_ vitally important. But, maybe the person doing that on New Alderaan’s behalf didn’t have to be their _monarch._ )

And it’s not like Leia had the only claim. The best one, but… There was her cousin, Almath Organa. (It makes Rey smile to imagine Threepio’s thought process as he directly quotes Almath Organa in saying, ‘Fuck the fuck off and die. You can pry my ass out of my shop with a crowbar when I’m dead,’ when he was asked if he’d like a turn at monarch.) And well, he didn’t want it. His sons, younger than Ben, were also a possibility, but… Their potential turns might come later. (As evidenced by Samath Organa’s current position.)

But Breha’s mother had sisters, and one of their offspring had survived. Jaxon Talmash. And, of course, the Antilies clan had surviving descendants. And when Jaxon Talmash married Ania Antillies… Well, it wasn’t the first time those two houses had commingled.

So, there were, _options._

And it’s true that Leia was stressed. She was fighting hard in the senate. The tighter the central control, the more the Republic could _do._ The more useful it was in creating a _good life_ for everyone under it. The tighter the central control, the harder it was to get people to join and stay. The Old Republic had inertia on its side. People didn’t just leave, because they were _used_ to being members, and reaped benefit from continuing to play along.

That was not true for the New Republic.

So, Leia was stressed, and she was _distracted_ , and… Well… “reasonable” people pointed out who her father truly had been, and what he and his had done. And they nodded to her hardline centrist positions when it came to _military matters_. And whispers began to flow from ear to ear about how, maybe… Leia didn’t need to be their Queen. About how… when he was young, and passionate, Anakin had been a crusader for good, but eventually, something went… wrong.

And she was sharp, and she was sarcastic, and she didn’t compromise as much as she could or, maybe, should. And… she kept harping about ‘dangers’ and the need for a defensive military force. Hadn’t the Emperor sung that song?

Could the Queen of Alderaan really afford to be a… militarist? A battle commander? The whispers suggested that blood will out, and Leia didn’t actually _deserve_ the name Organa. Organa died in the genocide, and somehow, Leia wasn't with him. Somehow, she'd been in the custody of Vader, and  _somehow_ she'd survived.

Another whisper began to circle though other ears. Because, when removing a monarch, bloodlessly, it wouldn’t do to whisper the same message to everyone. Rumors and gossip need to be tailored. So, while some were starting to look at the child of Vader with new eyes, others were contemplating if Leia actually _wanted_ to be part of New Alderaan.

After all, how interested in it could she be? It had been more than twenty years at that point, and she still hadn’t formally cemented her title. She didn’t live on New Alderaan. Her _family_ didn’t live on New Alderaan. They rarely saw her ‘consort,’ and had never seen her son.

How can someone claim the mantle of _queen_ if they aren’t willing to put their family on the land they claim to rule?

How could someone who didn’t have _roots_ in the community, rule it?

 

* * *

It, as best Threepio could tell, took five years. From first whisper to the day that Jaxon Talmash showed up to ‘have a chat’ with Leia.

He explained that, if Leia signed the, nice, oh so polite, papers, that she would be able to maintain her seat in the senate. After all, by the laws of the Senate a planet needed 50,000,000 people on it to have a seat in it’s own right, and her seat was appointed by the government of New Alderaan, and offered as a courtesy because of the Genocide of Alderaan, and it’s important history in maintaining the Old Republic.

And Leia, who was ever the deal maker, ever the politician, took the document, read it over, nodded, smiled, offered tea, spoke politely about New Alderaan current events, and asked to have the time to speak to her consort about this at length, to run it by her advisers.

Leia, of course, knew what she was doing. If Jaxon could hand her this document, let alone put it together, she no longer had popular support at home, and going back and regaining it, would have meant abandoning the much more important work she was doing in the senate.

There was something coming. The outer rim regions were reporting trouble. Ex-Imperials were starting to vanish. Whispers of something called _The First Order_ were starting to filter through their spy networks. She couldn’t afford to lose the Senate position, which meant she had to play nice with New Alderaan.

But she didn’t have to play _that_ nice. The document handed her was designed to remove her and her son from the line of succession.

Concordance Day, Ben’s birthday, ABY 23 was seventy-four days away. She ‘didn’t get a chance to talk to Han’ for fifty-five of them. That ate up a good bit of time. But not quite enough.

When she spoke to Jaxon again, and she told him she would be willing to abdicate. They could have a formal signing ceremony, and she’d pass the title on with grace and honor. But, as one of the primary heroes of the Rebellion, she was completely swamped in obligations until _after_ Condordance Day.

Jaxon didn’t fuss. The last thing anyone in his cohort wanted was a long, messy fight.

Maybe they didn’t know Ben’s birthday. Entirely likely, Leia and Han had never publicized it.

Maybe they decided that it didn’t matter. That having her go ahead and graciously sign the documents mattered more than the legal standing a future Ben Solo might have.

And maybe, playing a longer long game than expected, perhaps several of the would-be queenmakers, setting Ania Antillies on the throne, decided that keeping Ben Solo on the list of possibilities, but not actually having to deal with him, was an ideal way to manage the future. After all, just because Ania looked good _now,_ did not mean she wouldn’t be good _later._

And thus, in a blooming garden, with the flourish of an actual pen, on a physical piece of paper, and what certainly looked like a genuine smile, the house of Organa fell.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey finishes reading. She knows there are lessons here. Things she should see. Easily. She feels like she should see the practical applications of what Threepio’s offered her as easily as she sees Kylo sleeping beside her.

But she doesn’t.

Shadows, hints of ideas. They aren’t solid, and she’s… not easily focusing on them.

Not _yet._

 _You will._ She’s not sure who’s voice that is. It’s as much a ghost as the shape of what that lesson is supposed to teach, but… It’s real. Probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yes, I'm a bad star wars fan, but... I haven't read Bloodlines. I did some googling, read the wiki, though it sounded confusing as all get out (likely because they didn't want to spell out the entire plot and spoil the thing) so...
> 
> Yep. I just made it up. 
> 
> So, you've now got my version of the fall of the House of Organa.


	42. R&R

4/1/2

 

“Follow up meeting on the…” Kylo checks his calendar. “Third?”

Kinear blinks at that. “I’m available, but I’ve got you marked as off-duty then.”

Kylo growls quietly. “I had certainly intended to be. Then I caught the plague and burned through—”

Kinear stops him. “Kylo, you’re allowed off days. You’re allowed to get sick. You’re allowed to go on vacation. We are not actively fighting. We are not on a war footing. And even if we were, the men in charge get breaks because without rest, you can’t think.”

Kylo blinks.

“Look, _everyone_ is under the impression that you’re a hell of a lot easier to work with when you get time away from here. Not only that, but you’re _better_ at the job when you leave it for a bit. You think better, you make better decisions, and you’re faster on the uptake, so, please, as a personal favor to me and the entire rest of the Order, take your time off.”

Kylo just stares. “I… really?”

“Yes, really. I’ve double checked the bloody records. You know you’re basically the only person in the First Order who _never_ had a day off? Hux had off time, not a lot of it, but he took it. Even Snoke took vacations, Kylo. My guess is part of you _never_ being off was Snoke making sure you didn't get enough of your brain in charge to take him out, and we saw how well that worked.”

He hadn’t known that, but suddenly a collection of Snoke’s _personal missions_ are making more sense. “Oh… Uh… Then… The sixth?”

“Better.” Kinear’s still staring at him. They didn't have any meetings scheduled during the days he was supposed to be, but wasn't, off last month, and Kylo can feel him thinking _take a_ _ll of it._

“The seventh?”

Kinear nods, is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “There will, I’m sure, be times when you can’t get away. And with the way Ellie’s about to ramp up your calendar, off time may be getting scarce soon. I’ve had full _years_ where I was on duty every single day. But… we don’t have to do that right now, and if we do have to do that, we’re going to do a much better job of it if we’re not going into it completely exhausted. Fresh men, fresh troops… Even the fucking machinery needs downtime.” He sighs. “I very much appreciate you reaching out and forming a friendship with Jon. I think he’s good for you and vice versa. That said, the only downside of you only being close with Jon is that Jon works all the time so he doesn’t have to go back to his empty apartment. If you had other friends, you’d realize that most of us can do this job and not have to be at it all day every day.”

Kylo nods slowly at that. “Okay… What’s a… normal… amount of time off.”

“The men get eight off a day and two off every ten. We’ve got twelve months, and three tens per month, so…”

“At least forty-eight off?”

Kinear bites his lip. “Seventy-two.” He’s quiet, and Kylo’s blushing. “Speaking of working better when you’re well-rested.”

“Uh, yeah…” Kylo wants to curl into a little ball. He knows how to multiply six by twelve, it’s just somehow six by eight got in there, maybe because it’s the fourth month now, and he’s answering for the rest of the year, and not the question asked, but… That happened a lot when he was a kid. He’d have the right answer for something, just not necessarily the question he was being asked. “I take more than eight off a day.”

“A lot of officers do. It’s not a hard and fast rule. You know what the work is,” he gestures to the datapads. There are only three of them on his desk now. His personal one, which currently has enough reports to last from now until the end of time on it, and the two that Kinear brought with him for this, that have reports that  _cannot_ be seen by the wrong people, and thus aren't on the system. “Take the time you need to be able to focus on it well enough to do it, and then get it done.”

 

 

* * *

“Apparently, spending eleven days on my ass does not eat up my off-time,” Kylo says to Rey as he’s setting food on the table in front of her.

She looks mildly surprised, and then pleased by that, and then slightly down. “That’s good?”

He shrugs. “Maybe? I’m also apparently taking way too few off days, too. Something like two off out of every ten is normal.”

She blinks at him, never having comprehended that much time to do… nothing. “What would you do with that much time off?”

“I have no idea.” He pulls the plates to them, and she starts to dish up the meal. “Be here, I guess? I’d say maybe we could travel or something, but my guess is we’re going to be sick of that in the not too distant future.”

Rey sighs at that. After New Alderaan, Ellie’s supposed to have the first collection of ‘new experiences’ ready to go.  “We need to do at least some. Go see Ahch-To, find an island that looks good.”

“I suppose that’s an off-time sort of thing to do. Plan that, get it set up and ready to go. You need someone who can do that, and suddenly a pile of time just opened in my schedule.”

Rey knows that’s true. And she knows that Kylo knows she’s not leaping for joy at the idea of this. So, she understands he’s offering to just give it to her, as a finished deal. But that feels… off. “I was hoping we’d do that together.”

“Okay,” Kylo says. (Though it’s clear he’s wondering if this is a way for her to push looking for a new place further off. Rey rolls her eyes; it _might_ be.)

“I’m _scheduled_ for the next few days. Back when you set up the idea of off-time in the first place, I had Poe here covering me, but you got sick, so, I told him I’d be here, and he’s off, so…”

“Right.” Because she’s got twenty-four little responsibilities here who require some level of access to adults. “Is this the sort of here where you’ve got to be around the whole time, or…”

“I can’t leave for three days straight, but after the kids are done with cooking supper, I’m free.”

Kylo nods. Her usual evenings free sort of schedule. There are fun things to be done in the evenings. He remembers buying the panties and strap, and his thoughts about taking Rey to the R&R section, and how good that felt, and… maybe they could do some shopping, of a personal nature, together… After dinner. Or maybe with dinner…

There’s a word for what he’s thinking, and it takes a moment for him to find it, but he does, and then says, “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Rey blinks slightly at him. “A date?”

“Yeah, that’s the word Jon uses to describe this. You, me, we go out, do some romantic-type things, have a good time together.”

“We’ve been on dates before.”

“We have, but not like the one I’m thinking of.” He smiles at her, and she knows that naughty glint in his eyes.

She could just gently nudge his mind and know what he’s contemplating, but decides against it. “So, you want to take me out, for… a good time.”

He grins at her, eyes dark with amusement. “Very much so.” He thinks some more. “Do you have a free night, and an early morning with nothing scheduled?”

“This date may involve sleeping late?”

“I really hope so.”

She smiles back at him. “I’m intrigued.”

“Good.”

 

 

* * *

4/3/2

 

It feels absurdly bizarre to wake up, watch Rey go off to do the first lessons with the kids, and then do… nothing.

For the first few moments, Kylo’s just wandering around their home. He washes up the breakfast dishes. That eats up an additional three minutes. Putting them back is one more.

He tries to remember the last time he had fully unscheduled free time. Vacations with Rey, getting sick…

Okay, healthy, unscheduled, on his own time.

He’s coming to the conclusion that he’s _never_ had hours of time where he got to do whatever the hell it was he wanted with them that weren’t part of some sort of vacation with Rey.

Reading that novel. Right, there’d been a few hours where she was getting all dressed up and he had to amuse himself and… He supposes he could do that again. Make himself another cup of coffee, get into the library, and read for a while.

He glances at the comfy chair, and her datapad… _Her_ datapad. The one with the history of Alderaan that she wasn’t exactly thrilled to share with him because she utterly loathes him seeing her be less than awesome at something. The start of a plan begins, but… Just read all day? And then what…

Shit, he needs a plan.

 

 

* * *

Kylo’s not sure what it says about him that he’s having a considerably better time with his ‘off time’ now that he’s sitting, with a cup of coffee, and his data pad, scheduling out his days, but… Well, it’s helping.

He doesn’t feel so nervously open. He’s half-amusedly thinking that dark-siders should be good at just winging it, but as he’s debating what to fill this afternoon with, (he types: _Develop taste in music_?) it’s occurring to him that being someone who’s had basically every moment of his life scheduled for the last thirty-two… three… (he takes a moment, actually converts the date, and realizes his birthday is next month) thirty-two years, that maybe it’s okay to ease into this free time thing with some light (heavy) planning.

Besides, this date thing he’s contemplating for tomorrow night likely requires scheduling and… possibly an addition to his wardrobe. He was certainly thinking a long coat would be a good plan, and the idea of going to a sex shop with Rey… Yeah, he’s going to need some level of camouflage. (He erases _Develop taste in music?_ And types in _Get coat_.)

After a bit, he sits back and nods. Okay, he’s got a plan.

And the first thing on the plan, two hours to sit down and read something that isn’t a fucking report.

 

 

* * *

Rey’s datapad. Well… technically, it’s probably Threepio’s.

She wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about him reading the Alderaan history. And… well… he knows part of it is she finds it frustrating, and she doesn’t exactly love situations where he gets to see her struggle with something. She prefers to be effortlessly good at things, or at least have the image of that.

Especially with him. They don’t talk about the fact that she sort of feels like she ‘cheated’ by just sucking fifteen years of Jedi training directly out of his head… And, he didn’t exactly help that with the whole ‘teacher’ comment, and…

He knows her wariness about him reading this isn’t trying to keep him from getting at the information. It’s a deeper and somewhat twisty little worm in her head that’s afraid that if they both have to learn something he’s going to immediately take to it, and she’s going to be floundering around, actually in need of a teacher.

Both of them know that’s not exactly true, especially because he takes to new disciplines with the grace and elegance of a Favier on ice. (He sniggers at that mental image. The poor thing really didn’t have a clue what to do when its paws went out from under it. Apparently, ice is not a thing on Canto Bight.)

But it’s still there, and… He’s okay with not poking it. Especially to her face.

But, she’s not here right now, so…

He opens up the files, and finds there are several histories of Alderaan and New Alderaan, and settles down, eyes starting to skim the lines.

He wonders, idly, if Darth Vader, if the ‘grandfather’ in his mind would have held such sway if he’d had the chance to build roots in a different community. Probably, wouldn’t have mattered. He had stories of Breha and Bail, some at least, and Ben Kenobi, and of course how Vader turned in the end, but he wasn’t steeped in any given tradition or culture.

Luke didn’t know enough of the old ways to give them the sense that they were following in a million year long path, and Leia didn’t give him roots in the ashes of Alderaan, and Han didn’t know enough of his family to even try.

He sips his coffee, eyes returning to the text. Maybe he won’t take root, but it’s a start. Stories for his children, even if he’s got to look the damn things up himself.

 

 

 

 

* * *

When he looks up from the history, feeling fairly pleased with this part of the plan, three hours have passed, and he’s well into the _Beat on training droids/workout_ part of the day and getting close to _Go fetch lunch for Rey and I_.

For a heartbeat, he feels really startled, and a bit ashamed, he’s on day one of this, on a plan he made himself, and he’s already failed the damn thing, but…

He can actually feel the dark creeping up on him, starting to spiral in and around him, and he intentionally shuts it down.

He’s on _vacation._ He made a schedule just to help keep himself more comfortable with the pile of not much to do. There is no one checking up on him. No one is going to be disappointed in him if he reads instead of working out. He has _choices_ today and it’s okay to just flow from one to the next and _enjoy_ them.

He can go get food now (because fetch lunch and dinner are pretty much the only things on the list that he really _needs_ to do) and then work out after lunch and… Thinking about food, something occurs to him, he actually can _cook._ There’s not much in the kitchen here, but… Jon’s got a kitchen in his flat, so there have to be places on the F-Deck where you can get un-prepared food, right?

He thinks he used to like doing that, or at least didn’t hate it, back at Luke’s. And… if he got to intentionally make food that was designed to be tasty as opposed to as nutritious as possible… he might like that even more… And… It’s been a while since he spent some real time with Ostrae… Maybe… If she’s got some free time, they could… bake something, together.

He jots that down on his potential plan for the afternoon of the day after tomorrow. (Tomorrow after lunch he’s got blocked out for _Date with Rey._ )

 

 

* * *

On the F-Deck, rapidly coming to the conclusion that _obtain food to cook_ is a significantly more complicated endeavor than he’s thinking it’ll be, Kylo bumps that to his next break.

Apparently, cooking, assuming you want to make things that taste _good,_ involves having some idea of what it is you intend to cook, and what goes into it, and where to get those things and…

Next break.

He wanders over to a noodle cart, and gets two bowls of some sort of vegetable over cold noodles in a savory sauce, and feels a certain sense of accomplishment when he gets home with lunch before Rey’s done with her lessons.

 

 

* * *

“Could I shadow your lessons the day after tomorrow?” he asks Rey during lunch, as they’re slorping down the noodles.

She raises an eyebrow.

He shrugs a little, and then looks out toward what would be, if it weren’t snowing so hard, a view of the rest of the settlement, and the kitchen where everything takes place now. “I just… I don’t actually know what it is you really do here on a given day, and… I’d kind of like to know, and… I don’t know… Maybe actually learn more about what being a Maji is?”

Rey’s still looking awfully skeptical. “I thought you’d had enough ‘balance, focus, find your quiet spot’ lessons for one lifetime.”

Kylo sighs. That’s a big part of _not_ having sat in on any of her previous lessons. Maintaining the balance of them not being a teacher for each other is another part of it. Not being flamingly bad at it, in front of her, is another. “I may have, and it’s possible I’ll bug out after the first one, but… Do you mind?”

“No, not at all! I just didn’t think it was the sort of thing you’d enjoy.”

He shrugs a bit. “Maybe it’s not but… I guess I’m trying new things.”

She smiles at him a bit. “Good.”

 

 

* * *

Kylo might not know exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow night, but he does know that he’s not making the same mistake he made last time. This time, he’s going in properly covered.

It’s not like being an adolescent Padawan, wearing loose, drapy drawstring trousers and a simple tunic over them, thus resulting in erections visible from orbit. (At least that’s how it felt.) Last time he was wearing snug trousers and snug shorts, so it wasn’t as much of an issue, but still… He knows he caught at least a few… possibly admiring… or at least appraising, glances in the direction of his shaft, so…

He’s got to get something to cover it up.

Actually, that’s not quite true. He has clothing that covers that bit of him quite nicely, it just happens to all be his command or formal blacks, which are NOT going to work for this particular plan.

It’s one thing for people to speculate what the Master gets up to when he’s having a good time. It’s a whole other thing for them to _know._

He’d been thinking of getting a long coat, because, like the tunics he has for his blacks, that’ll hang down in front of him, and keep any less than discrete bulges covered up.

And he’s about to give Jon a quick call and see where one would go to get something like that when a few thoughts occur to him. Firstly, Jon does have a real job, and showing him the ins and outs of the ship he ostensibly _commands_ is not among them. Secondly, he is in possession of a data pad which contains not only a listing of every shop on this ship, but a map of where they are.

This is a problem he can solve for himself.

So, he does.

 

 

* * *

He’s seven subsections away from the shop that sells coats. He certainly _can_ walk that. If he jogs a bit, he’s sure he can get there and back in the time allotted between now and supper. He just… doesn’t know if he needs to.

He does know that some sort of snack is in order, so that’s the first thing he’s going to do.

Kylo’s starting to feel like he could maybe get used to doing this. Looking around, seeing where people are, using Poe’s advice, if there’s a big line in a place where there are a lot of options to eat, whatever’s at the end of that line will be good, and then queuing up.

That part is fine. The fact that the people around him still don’t know what to do with him is… Annoying. That’s probably the word that most readily accompanies this feeling.

As soon as the couple in front of him noticed he was behind them, they jolted to attention, and all but leapt out the way to let him take their place in the line.

Then they wilted when he glared at them, pointed to where they had been, and quietly said, “I’m not in so big of a rush as to need to line jump.”

That got both of them stepping back into place, but doing so made the people in front of them notice something was up, and then they leapt to attention and… The other people in line can feel something is going on, so more of them are looking, and stiffening up, and…

“I just want to get some food. You just want to get some food. This will work a hell of a lot better if you pretend I’m just another member of the Order looking to eat.”

That gets a collection of extremely tense and uneasy people turning back around toward the front of the line, all pummeling Kylo with very intense thoughts along the lines of what the hell are they supposed to do _now._

(And, of course, there is _no one_ in line behind him.)

He figures that Schiff is absolutely right, no one wants him showing up for an unexpected visit. Even here and now, at rest, they’re edgy about him being behind him. He’s very aware that everyone in the line just stopped talking about work, too. No one wants him to overhear them complaining about _anything_.

Ellie’s probably right, too. He should visit his ships, and as many of his recruiting stations/outposts as he can, let them at least attempt to get  _used_ to him being around, but he’s got to let them know he’s coming ahead of time, or he’ll just get a lot of this. Very tense people, trying to stare at him without moving their eyes.

On the upside, when he does get to the other end of the line, he finds the cart is selling some sort of protein patty on a bun with sweet/sour relish. It’s awfully good, and the proprietor is with it enough to figure out that if he was willing to wait in line, he’s not going to appreciate not paying. (Though Kylo is suspicious that just possibly everyone else didn’t get quite so many of the crispy fried vegetable sticks that went with the sandwich.)

He notices, looking around, that it’s true that a lot of people are eating at the tables around him, but some of them are taking advantage of the small packet the food is in, to eat on the move. And there is a tram… slowing down, pointed in the direction he wants to go, not too far from him.

Kylo speeds up, and meets the tram where it stops. He’s never been on one and is a little unsure of the mechanics, but the people around him wait for the people on the tram to get off, and then they hop on, so he does, too.

He settles back into his seat, and notices that he does _not_ have to share. He’s got his whole row to himself, and the ones in front and behind him, and then, with nothing else to do as the tram starts to move, he eats his snack, and pays attention.

 

 

* * *

Everyone around him on this level is an officer. Supposedly. Maybe someone on the tram, or some of the people hurrying around are enlisted sent here to locate and fetch an officer. Everyone else is of rank, and given where they are and what they’re doing, likely moving to or from a work shift.

At least half of the people on the tram, like him, are in casual clothing, so relaxing after work. Or before. Or today may be their off day.

He’s half thinking it might be nice to talk to some of them, ask about what they do, and how they spend their off time, but again, he can feel just being near them is making them nervous.

It’s hard to relax when the man in charge is around.

It’s hard to relax when you are the man in charge. Everyone who’s recognized who he is is watching _very_ carefully, cataloging his clothing, hair style, what he’s eating, how he eats it. He’s mentally snarking about how one of them has likely counted his nose hairs by now, but… They don’t usually _see_ him, so he supposes staring is normal. (He also supposes doing things where he leaves his office and lets them see him is probably in order, too. That triggers another thought, Jon’s mentioned it takes close to an hour to get to him, and… he checks his chrono, and yes, he’s an hour into his mission to go find a coat, so… His datapad is not glued to his desk. He probably could plop his ass at one of the tables in the food courts and work there. That might make low stakes meetings easier for his men to get to.)

He can also feel a lot of them are intrigued by the idea that he’s here, sitting near them, eating a sandwich and going somewhere.

Being, flagrantly, off-duty.

Just like they are.

There are two, near the front of the tram, who are very much off-duty, and apparently having a good time of it. He can’t imagine they’re ranked much above Ensign, maybe a First Lieutenant. If they’re older than Jacen, it’s by months, not years.

They keep turning to look at him, and then whipping back around, eyes front, to whisper to each other. He absolutely knows by the exaggerated way they’re whipping back to eyes front that both of them are drunk.

One of the two of them, a tall, dark-haired young man, turns to him again, and then, gathering up his courage, he stands up, swaying a bit, and heads back to Kylo. He doesn’t sit down, but he does stand in front of the seat in front of Kylo, and then says, “Excuse me, sir. My friend and I have a bet, and… I know this is forward, but…”

“Yes?”

“Are you really here, or did we drink way the fuck too much?”

Kylo looks down, bites his lip, and silently laughs for a moment before looking up. “I’m really here, but if you had drunk too much, isn’t that what your hallucination would say?”

That idea completely staggers that drunk, and the people in the tram around them are all staring now.

Finally, the drunk says, “If you’re really here, what’s something you know, that I don’t?”

“Among other things, how not to get so drunk in public that I end up chatting with hallucinations.”

“See, that sounds like something a hallucination would say.”

Kylo smiles at that. “Indeed. How about this,” he takes a moment to quickly rifle through the surface thoughts of the… he most certainly is an Ensign, in front of him. “This is your first long break since you got your Ensigns’s pip, and you and your friend are overdoing it. I’d suggest heading home, drinking a lot of water before you pass out, and making sure you’ve got some sort of analgesic on hand, because when you wake up, you’re going to wish someone would smother you with a pillow to put you out of your misery.”

The Ensign’s eyes are wide, and he’s astonished by the amazing wisdom of the great Kylo Ren. Then his eyes narrow. “That’s something I know that you don’t.”

Kylo cocks his head and takes a bite of his sandwich. “Maybe I am a hallucination. Where are you stationed?”

“Here, this hallway, subsection 15.” Three stops from where they are now.

“No. I mean, what is your duty?”

“Oh. Right now, I’m a watch officer.”

Kylo tries not to laugh at that, too. “So, it’s your job to make sure the enlisted show up on time at the right place at the right time, and get their jobs done?”

“Yes... Should I call a hallucination, Sir?”

Kylo mildly says, “That’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had," very aware of all the other officers staring at them, hoping this poor twit isn't going to get his ass handed to him by one of them when he sober and back on duty.

He nods so hard he almost topples over and says, “Sir.”

“You're allowed your pleasures on your off time." He hope that neuters any desire the other officers might have to spank this kid for being fresh. "But, it absolutely wouldn’t do for you to be late to your next shift.”

“Of course, sir!” He snaps off something that would have been a fairly impressive salute if he hadn’t slapped himself in the forehead.

“Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” And the drunk goes wandering back to his buddy, and then spends the rest of the ride giggling with him about their encounter with Kylo Ren.

Meanwhile, the people seated near him continue to do their best to not look directly at him while being utterly amazed at what he did with that encounter.

Kylo sighs a bit and wonders if this will ever wear off. Maybe, its possible, there might be a time when he can be out, and be Kylo, and just… be a person. Probably not here.

 

 

* * *

It’s exactly what the entry in the Order F-Deck guide said it would be. A store. That sells coats. For men. It should have precisely what Kylo’s looking for.

But… if he thought about it… Well, okay, no he’s not capable of coming up with this thought unprompted, but here he is, in the store, prompted as fuck, and… Yeah.

Kylo sighs, walking around, feeling the extremely startled gaze of the proprietor on him, as he confirms his suspicions.

Three years ago, this was still the First Order. Right now, it’s the Order. A formal great coat is part of the official uniform of Order, and previously First Order, officers.

There are long coats here. They are, he can see, very nice long coats. Even Kylo recognizes good leather, better stitching, and quality workmanship. The problem is, they’re _all_ greatcoats. And most of them are black. There are a few gray, a few blue, and a spattering of brown ones, but… They’re greatcoats, and he’s sure, that given where he is, this is where officers buy the greatcoat that is supposed to be part of their uniform when they want a nicer one than the standard issue wool one that comes with their first Ensign’s pip.

“Master!” And now he’s got the proprietor at his left hand, all but quivering with the desire to be helpful. “Sir! I’m so honored to have you in my store. What can I do for you?” He’s blushing, eyeing Kylo’s shoulders, and blushing more. “Sir… You’re a… I mean… I can make anything you may want, but…”

Kylo mentally rolls his eyes. “You’ve got nothing that’s going to look right with my shoulders and waist?”

The owner nods, embarrassed. “I can fit your shoulders and chest, and as long as you keep it unbuttoned, it will work just fine, but as soon as you close the coat, it will be clear that it’s made for a man with more belly than you.”

He’s still eyeing Kylo.

“To a degree that’s not _that_ big of a problem. A coat like this should hang straight or slightly narrower at the waist, but…”

“But none of the coats you have here will do that for me?”

“No, my Lord, I am sorry. If you’d let me measure you, I can have one made, quickly. Tomorrow, the day after…” There are beads of sweat on the man’s forehead, and Kylo doesn’t need to be empathic to know that if there will be a perfectly tailored coat for him tomorrow or the next day, it will be because this man doesn’t sleep between now and delivering it.

Kylo shakes his head. “I was mostly just curious.” He mostly had a very different idea of a long coat. He’s never worn a First Order uniform, and intentionally has maintained that through moving into the Order. He doesn’t feel a need to put on the uniform designed by and for men like Hux. And, honestly, he’s big enough as is, he doesn’t need to add a garment designed to make his shoulders look even bigger. People will start to mistake him for construction equipment if he gets much bigger than he currently is.

Unfortunately, that response depresses the tailor. He’d been very pleased by the idea of getting something of his onto Kylo.

Kylo tries a soft smile. “I was looking for something casual.” He was looking for something that he could close in front, and these are just not going to do that, either. He supposes if the shadows hit everything right, they’d be good camouflage, but none of these coats are going to work the way his tunic does. “And… It’s clear, everything in here is just too… good… for casual wear.”

“I can make something casual.”

Kylo mentally rolls his eyes. There is no way of getting out of this store without giving the man a commission or breaking his heart unless he uses his powers.

He’s subtle about it, and tries to be diplomatic, but he knows it’s the mind trick, and not his ability to persuade that wins this. “I know you can, and I’m sure it would be lovely, but you don’t need to. I’m perfectly satisfied with this encounter, and have exactly what I need from it.”

The tailor’s eyes light up. ‘Oh, Master Ren, that’s wonderful. If you ever need anything…”

“I’ll make sure to call upon you.”

“Thank you so much!”

 

 

* * *

As he’s leaving the store Kylo pulls up his do-not-recognize spell. Trying to shop for anything more expensive than food while being _Kylo Ren_ means having to walk on vibro-blades to try and get service and _not_ appall/terrify/insult the proprietor, or have them want to shoot themselves when they don’t have what he needs.

As he’s walking through this market section, which appears to have a lot of clothing stores, the thought hits that it doesn’t much matter what he’s wearing. At least, if Jon got that story about the blond, bespectacled, orange jumper-wearing version of him correct.

That thought has him wondering what he must look like, now, to the people around him. Whatever it is, they aren’t paying much attention. He supposes he could just drop into someone else’s mind and get a view, but that would require making sure one of them notices him. He glances at the windows of the shops he’s passing, wishing he could catch a reflection of what they see.

All he sees is him.

And… behind him… Kylo stops walking. He made a joke about one once, to Rey. Back when he was still wearing the trousers with the fifteen button flies. Something like, “I’ll get a kilt. You could just flip it up.” And Rey told him he had bony knees and he posed for her and said something about striking terror into the heart of the galaxy with his white, bony knees.

And there, in front of him, is indeed, a black kilt. The other things in the store look fairly casual, and he feels himself drift in.

He’s standing in front of it. It’s not just black. It’s got pleats in the back, and the outside of the pleats are black, and the inside is gray, and all of it is the most supple leather he’s ever touched. It feels stupidly good under his fingers. Thick, heavy, smooth, with an easy drape.

He’s a little wary of the easy drape. Anything protruding under the kilt will likely show up. But… it’s also heavy enough that anything attempting to protrude from under the kilt will likely keep pointing down, or, if he arranged himself properly, spend it’s time snug against his belly or hip.

It would probably end up working a lot like his tunic did. Wear something snug under it, and the weight of the garment would keep everything else discreet.

He looks at the sweater he’s wearing right now. It comes down to just above his pelvis. Put that with the kilt, and… He could likely go shopping with Rey for fun stuff and not end up with too many people getting a very good idea of what he looks like when he’s having a _very_ good time.

One other thought hits him as he’s going through them, looking for the waist size he remembers from Jon’s note, with something like this, it doesn’t matter that men with his waist rarely have the size thighs he does. As long as it fits his waist, the rest of him will slip into this nice and easy, too.

He’s smirking, feeling very pleased, as the attendant comes over and asks if he wants to try it on before he buys it.

And, anonymous, all he feels off of her is the desire for the commission she’ll get if she sells this to him. She isn’t scared, or feeling the need to grovel with him. She’s being a bit warmer and more flirtatious than she’d be otherwise, but apparently men are more likely to buy things from women who stand a little too close and make fluttery eyes at them.

He wonders if that would work if Rey wasn’t in his life, but it’s mostly absent wondering. There are certainly women from whom he likely would buy anything they handed him, but for whatever reason, this one isn’t hitting him that way. Possibly because it’s so bright in the top of her mind that selling him, and every other person who walks in here and likes women, clothing is why she’s so warm and friendly and standing too close.

As he’s heading out, kilt in a bag in his hand, he’s feeling pretty good about tomorrow.

And better about tonight. He’s sure if he brings home more of those sandwiches, Rey’ll be really pleased with him.

 

 

* * *

With an hour to go before he needs to get supper and go home, another thought hits Kylo. There are probably _variations_ as to what different Specs offer, and there are likely… aesthetic issues involved, and… He thinks a little further… The Finalizer had a compliment of 74,000 when he was there. It’s got to be up to 90,000 by now which means there’s at least 900 Specs on board.

The chance of him just strolling up to a place where he and Rey can get a good massage, and just a good massage, and say… not end up with someone who expects to offer them a whole lot more than a massage, likely aren’t great.

And it would be at this point where it occurs to him, that yes, he’s got the _Supremacy_ directory, he does not have the one for the _Finalizer_ so unless he asks for a copy of one, which will likely involve either explaining why he wants one, or just _looking_ at C8 hard enough that he decides not to ask, the only way he’s going to somehow, magically, take them to the right sort of place and that place just happens to have an opening for them, is by sheer luck of the Force.

Or, he can go back to his room, sit down the with directory, and find out what’s available here, on the _Supremacy._

* * *

He’s been scrolling through names for five solid minutes. He’s absolutely correct about the Specs having specialties, and preferred services, and customers, and… Yeah. Just walking into a place is a _bad_ idea.

Finally, he says, “C8, what’s the compliment on the _Supremacy_ now?”

“We’re up to six point three million on board.”

“Thank you.” Well, that explains the scrolling. Unless there’s waiting lists stretching into next week, there’s likely at least fifteen thousand Specs on board, and given what he’s hoping to turn this ship into, likely more.

There’s an address search feature. He puts in F-Deck. No need to go scanning through the ladies that work on C, D, or E; he knows he’s not going there. That narrows it down some. He whimpers slightly, he’s still got 1287 options.

Massage narrows it down some, men and women narrows it down a little, couples gets it down a bit more, but by the time he’s put in every keyword he can think of, he’s still got 400 options, and that’s just too damn many for him to search through in… A quick glance at the chrono shows he’s got twenty minutes before he needs to get home with dinner.

Okay. He doesn’t have to get this figured out right this second. He’s got unscheduled time tomorrow morning, too, so he can… Try to narrow the search down more, and…

Well… He does know someone who’s done this. Here. And it’s not like the man is under any illusions about him, so…

He jots down a quick note.

 

_Jon,_

_I’m not calling because this isn’t a big enough deal to disrupt whatever you’re up to right now._

_But, I’m hoping to take Rey out tomorrow night, and get us both massages. I remember you mentioning fun with bath time and a massage, and… Is there anyone you’d recommend? And…_ (he’s decidedly not blushing as he’s typing this) _someone who won’t be fussed if we just want massages. Any post-massage fun will be had without outside help._ (He figures that’s specific enough.)

 _I can make an appointment myself._ (Theoretically, he thinks.) _I just need a clue as to who to try and book._

_Thanks,_

_Kylo_

 

 

* * *

He’s half a minute from gathering up everything to go home when his comm chimes.

“Okay, this is vastly more entertaining than the contract I’m going through. You want Spec reccs?” Jon sounds supremely amused by this.

“Did you know there’s something like 15,000 Specs on this ship?”

Jon laughs.

“And the directory tells me they’ve got specialties.” It’s clear from the way he pauses that he didn’t exactly _know_ what a good third of the listed specialties were.

He can feel the expression on Jon’s face. “Oh, you’d be right about _that_. And let me guess, you really don’t want to take Rey to the wrong place.”

“I really don’t. ‘Here, Love, lets have a nice, relaxing night out, oh holy FUCK WHAT IS THAT!?!’” (It’s possible his voice might be a bit too emphatic here. But, he got curious after he saw ‘sounding’ three times, because he absolutely could not even begin to imagine what that was, so he looked it up. He wishes he didn’t.)

Jon laughs for way too long at that line before saying, “Have you been drinking?”

“No, why?”

“Apparently, you’re fun on vacation. Anyway. Yes, I have a recommendation. What time are you thinking?”

“I can make my own appointment.”

Jon laughs at that, too. Apparently, he’s just amusing as fuck right now. “I’m sure you can, but since my friend is very, very good at this, you need to book weeks in advance if you’re not already a client. I didn’t get the sense that your fun night out was for two months from now.”

“Fuck.”

“Since, I already am a client, let me book you and Rey.”

Kylo’s quiet. But, he’s got to say it to get the idea across. “I was sort of hoping to go in cloaked.”

Jon’s quiet for a moment, because he’s certain cloaked isn’t the same thing for Kylo that it is for him. Then understanding dawns. “Oh, the thing where you don’t look like you. Yeah, probably not a terrible idea. Does that work on people who are touching you and really paying attention?”

Kylo shrugs. “It has in the past.”

“People who didn’t expect to see Kylo Ren?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, what name do you use when you’re not being Kylo?”

“Rey and Ben Amidala. And, time wise, probably looking for 18:00.”

“Just getting the evening off to a good start?”

“That’s the idea.” He can feel Jon smiling at that. “Do you have time to grab lunch with me tomorrow?”

He can hear Jon shuffling things around, and understands he’s checking his schedule. “Yes, and if you come to me, I’ve got more than ten minutes to do it in.”

“I can come to you. Where’ll you be?”

More shuffling sounds. “Actually, down on ZZ, looking at the layout. We’ve got a meeting to go over this stuff later next week, but a few minutes tomorrow could cover the basics.”

“Okay, that’ll work. If you’ve got a taste for something specific, let me know, and I’ll make sure to bring it.”

“Good. See you tomorrow.”

 

 

* * *

He again beats Rey home.

It’s _cold._ He turns on the cooker, and opens the door. Turns on the burners, too.

She wants to look for a new home with him, so… Sure, good, but… He decides to check his personal chrono to see if it has temperature sensors. It does. He takes it off and checks. It’s 14. Inside. With the heat on.

Yes, they get cold snaps. It’s not snowing right now, and that tends to go along with the temperature dropping, but… A year… That might be too generous on the time frame for when they’ve got to get out of here.

Poe’s back the day after tomorrow. They need to sit down and talk about getting a sooner rather than later plan into play for getting everyone out of here. The mental image of talking with Poe about ferrying the equipment necessary for a full ecology scan while working on his waltz forms in his mind, and he sniggers at it.

“What’s got you laughing?” Rey asks, startling him so badly he almost drops the sandwiches.

“Uh…” Shit, he’s blushing, and he knows it’ll take her barely a second of effort to figure it out.

“Kylo?”

He can’t get it out of the top of his thoughts. It’s glowing there, dancing with Poe, learning, his wedding surprise for her, refusing to be banished.

Her eyes narrow slightly. “I’m going to leave it alone, because I know it's a surprise, but if you’d think about it a little less, it’d be easier.”

He bites his lip, nods, and looks at dinner. Food. Good food. Right. “I tried something new today.”

That has Rey interested. “Good new?”

“Well, I brought more of it home, so… I liked it.”

“Okay, let me take my boots off, and…” He’s shaking his head. “No?”

“Floor’s bloody cold." He'd taken his boots off when he got home and very quickly realized that was a bad plan. "Let the cooker get it a few more degrees up.”

“Okay,” she sits at the table, notices her datapad where he left it. “Were you reading my pad?”

He doesn’t exactly feel guilty about that, but he also wasn’t invited to do it, either. He puts the sandwiches and fried veggie sticks on plates for them. “You wanna get drinks?”

She stands up and pours some pear cider into a pot on the burner. A hot drink’ll go down a treat right now. “Evading?”

“Cold.” He puts the plates in the cooker to keep them warmer while the drink heats. “And, uh, yeah. I was. You weren’t wrong, New Alderaan history is a sarlac.”

“I told you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a glutton for punishment, so…”

She snerks slightly at that. “How far did you get?”

“Just got to intercontinental trade. The old ocean ships starting to bring goods from one side of the planet to the other, and how the Organas were captains and sailors.”

She smiles a little at that. “You like that idea.”

“A little. I… never had the chance to really feel like or… be… an Organa, I guess. But, I kind of like the idea of it, you know. Everything in the world that matters to you wrapped up in fragile shell of wood, taking it across dangerous seas by the light of the stars, hoping that if you’re good at it, you’ll make a fortune that secures the future for yourself and your family. That… resonates.”

She smiles at that, too. “Does it, now?”

“Yeah… It does… Maybe… when we're done being the Master and Mistress, we’ll get a good ship, and just get out there. Go from place to place and show our family the galaxy. Go back to the Maji in between adventures, and tell them what’s out there, maybe take some of them along from time to time. Maybe just us for some of it.”

Steam starts to rise from the pot. Rey pours the cider into mugs for them, and Kylo levitates the plates to the table. They sit, hip to hip, and she pulls the blanket from the comfy chair to wrap around the two of them while they eat.

“Do you like that idea?” he asks. “Or is that… not grounded enough?”

She shrugs a bit. “I think, if we’ve got a homebase, somewhere to keep going back to at the end of the journeys, it will be.”

“I can do that.”

She takes a bite of the sandwich. “These are good. So, tell me about your adventures with unscheduled time.”

He laughs at the idea of unscheduled, and begins to fill her in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so R&R and date night ended up being HUGE with several different variations and themes coming into play, so I broke it into (as of this point) five chapters.


End file.
